Panama Books

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914

David McCullough

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Total reviews: 131 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Truman, here is the national bestselling epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal. In The Path Between the Seas, acclaimed historian David McCullough delivers a first-rate drama of the sweeping human undertaking that led to the creation of this grand enterprise.

The Path Between the Seas tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. Applying his remarkable gift for writing lucid, lively exposition, McCullough weaves the many strands of the momentous event into a comprehensive and captivating tale.

Winner of the National Book Award for history, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, and the Cornelius Ryan Award (for the best book of the year on international affairs), The Path Between the Seas is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, the history of technology, international intrigue, and human drama.

Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time-- the Building of the Panama Canal

Matthew Parker

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A thrilling tale of exploration, conquest, money, politics, and medicine

The Panama Canal was the costliest undertaking in human history. It literally required moving mountains, breaking the back of the great range that connects North and South America. Begun by the French in 1880, its successful completion in 1914 by the Americans marked the end of the Victorian Age and the beginning of the “American Century.”

The building of the Panama Canal was a project whose gestation spanned hundreds of years. Columbus himself searched for a way to get to the Pacific across the narrow isthmus of Central America. For centuries, monarchs, presidents, businessmen, and explorers all struggled to find such a passage, knowing that whoever controlled it would exert unsurpassed control over global trade, and therefore the fate of nations.

The first history of this mighty achievement in nearly thirty years, Panama Fever draws on diaries, memoirs, letters, and other contemporary accounts, bringing the experience of those who built the canal vividly to life. The massive project riveted public attention: “Panama Fever” spread throughout the Western world. Politicians and businessmen engaged in high-stakes international diplomacy in order to influence its location, path, ownership, and construction. Meanwhile, ditch-diggers, machinists, drivers, engineers, and foremen from all over the world rushed to take advantage of high wages and the chance to be a part of history.

But the grim reality of Panama – searing heat, torrential rains, fatal mud slides, and malarial mosquitoes – soon caught up with them. More than 25,000 of those who enthusiastically signed on as workers succumbed to dysentery, yellow fever, and malaria, giving a fatal twist to the meaning of “Panama Fever.” The truly horrific toll unleashed a second race to find a cure so the canal could be completed. The discoveries of the heroic doctors who battled these diseases would lead to a sea change in the way infectious diseases were treated, thus paving the way for the tremendous medical advances of the twentieth century.

Filled with remarkable characters, including Teddy Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, and Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French genius who built the Suez Canal and almost snatched Panama out from under American control, Panama Fever is an epic historical adventure that shows how a small but fiercely contested strip of land in a largely unknown Central American nation suddenly made the world a smaller place and launched the era of American global dominance.

Six Minutes to Freedom

Kurt Muse, John Gilstrap

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Kurt Muse handed over his passport at Torrijos International Airport, just as he’d done countless times. Instantly, he sensed that something was wrong. Rather than the cursory glance followed by the whack of the entry stamp, the bureaucrat held the little book in both hands. He seemed to be studying it. And then he smiled. Kurt followed the clerk’s gaze to a piece of paper taped to his partition. The sign was handwritten in Spanish:

Kurt Muse American Citizen Arrest Him

His life was over.

Born in the United States, raised in Panama, Kurt Muse grew up with a deep love for his adopted country. But by the late 1980s, Panama was suffering under the regime of Manuel Noriega. Innocent people disappeared. Beatings and murders became commonplace.

For Kurt Muse, accepting such a dictator was not an option. For two years, Kurt and a few friends operated clandestine radio stations on low-tech equipment smuggled into Panama. At first, they broadcast on a small scale. But in late 1987, the group realized that they could override any transmission from a government-run radio network, and Radio Constitucional was born.

Muse and his compatriots chose Noriega’s Loyalty Day address, simulcast on every radio station in the country, for its first transmission. Just as Noriega began his self-serving message, Radio Constitucional seized the airwaves, urging the people to rise up in defense of their freedom. Kurt knew that if his identity was revealed, he and his family would be in grave peril. But he had no idea what kind of terror, confusion, and betrayal lay in store for all of them.

Six Minutes to Freedom spins the remarkable tale of Kurt’s arrest by Noriega’s henchmen and his months of imprisonment; the squalid conditions he faced in Panama’s infamous Modelo Prison; his eyewitness accounts of his fellow inmates’ torture; and the plight of Kurt’s family as they fled for their lives. And it reveals, for the first time, the astonishing details of the long-awaited day when helicopters arrived in a firestorm of bullets to whisk Kurt Muse from under the noses of thugs who had been ordered to kill him.

This is Kurt’s thrilling and highly personal story—the story of an American hero on foreign soil, who risked his life for his beliefs and for freedom…and became the only American civilian ever rescued by the elite Delta Force.

A Guide to the Birds of Panama

Robert S. Ridgely, John A. Gwynne

Amazon Price: $32.97 List Price: $49.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Princeton University Press Amazon Marketplace: 28 new & used starting at $30.00

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is the first paperback version of the second edition of the popular A Guide to the Birds of Panama. In the second edition, published in 1989, the authors expanded information on the birds of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras: approximately 200 new species were added to the material in the 1976 edition. Over 300 additional species, some of them Panamanian, were illustrated. Sixteen new plates were added, and three of the original plates were replaced by improved versions. Throughout the book changes were made to accommodate the explosion in knowledge of the birds of Panama and nearby areas and of neotropical birds in general. The basic sequence and systematics of the AOU 1983 Check-list were adopted. Also included in the revised edition was expanded and updated information on birdfinding in Panama, prepared with the assistance of two of Panama's best resident birders. The book also contains a special section outlining developments in Panama ornithology and conservation. "A sophisticated treatment of one of the world's richest avifaunas."--The Quarterly Review of Biology

The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs

Ulrich Keller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Magnificient Recapturing of History 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful.

I lived in Panama for 17 years and have written 3 books on Panama. How how I wish I had this beautifully spectacular book years ago. What an inspiraton it would have been during those dreary hours of writer's block. Each of these magnificient pictures are indeed worth a thousand words -- and there are so many pictures in this book! The United States "helped" Panama separate from Colombia in 1903, the following year the great task, which had defeated the French, of building an interoceanic canal began. It would take a full and painful 10 years. The rare photographs in this book document those years. How wonderful that they have been saved and are now offered to another generation!

The building of the Panama Canal in historic photograph 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Wealth of information! This book eloquently navigates through Panama's Canal history; merging dynamic cultural and socio-political elements that contributed to this technological marvel. As a lifetime resident of the Canal Zone I taught I knew the definitive version of the Canals creation, however these photographs of the mundane to the sublime still concedes a wealth of information.

Editorial Review:

Extensive text and 164 historic photographs tell the compelling story of the Canal's construction: dredging, housing, internal government, engineering feats, failures, and final success.

Portrait of the Panama Canal: From Construction to the Twenty-First Century (International Portrait Series)

William Friar

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An excellent short and concise history of the Panama Canal. 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Not only does Friar present a wonderful historical synopsis of the Canal, he also paints a verbal picture of life as a child growing up in the Canal Zone. The photographs of the Canal are some of the best I have seen. The captions are not "one-liners," they actually describe the what the reader is seeing in the photograph. The reader should come away with a very good knowledge of Panama Canal history and an understanding of how the Canal operates all within the 2 to 3 hours it takes to read the book.

Highly recommended for cruise passengers 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I read this book prior to transiting the Canal. It covers history and operations in precise detail and the numerous dramatic photos make it a wonderful souvenir of the Canal. There are other books that are very long and heavy to take with you.This book has all the information in easily readable style for those who don't have time for a thick book on this subject. Reads like an adventure story.

Editorial Review:

This lively collection of historic and contemporary photographs accompanied by insightful text showcases one of the true wonders of the world.

The Sack of Panama: Captain Morgan and the Battle for the Caribbean

Peter Earle

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Captain Henry Morgan's capture of the city of Panamá  in 1671 is seen as one of the most audacious military operations in history.  In The Sack of Panamá , Peter Earle masterfully retells this classic story, combining thorough research with an emphasis on the battles that made Morgan a pirate legend.Morgan's raid was the last in a series of brutal attacks on Spanish possesions in the Caribbean, all sanctioned by the British crown.  Earle recounts the five violent years leading up to the raid, then delivers a detailed account of Morgan's march across enemy territory, as his soldiers contended with hunger, tropical diseases, and possible ambushes from locals.  He brings a unique dimension to the story by devoting nearly as much space to the Spanish victims as to the Jamican privateers who were the aggressors.The book covers not only the scandalous events in the Colonial West Indies, but also the alarmed reacions of diplomats and statesmen in Madrid and London.  While Morgan and his men were laying siege to Panamá , the simmering hostilities between the two nations resulted in vicious political infighting that rivaled the military battles in intensity.  With a wealth of colorful characters and international intrigue, The Sack of Panamá is a painstaking history that doubles as a rip-roaring adventure tale.

Dreams of Iron and Steel: Seven Wonders of the Modern Age, from the Building of the London Sewers to the Panama Canal (P.S.)

Deborah Cadbury

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Exceptional story telling of 7 great wonders by one of the best historians around 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

If you haven't discovered Deborah Cadbury yet then she is one of the best and sharpest writers around. Her text is spare, her research impeccable, and her ability to draw out threads without resorting to tabloid sensationalism makes for satisfying reading. In this, her third book, Cadbury covers the seven wonders of the industrial world, putting the feats, their makers, and the events into context of the time and what they have meant in history.

This is the GREAT industrial revolution. The 7 wonders are The Great Eastern (the largest boat of its time a double hulled steel boat by Brunel), The Bell Rock Lighthouse, the Brooklyn Bridge, The London Sewers, The Transcontinental Railroad, The Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam.

What I love about Cadbury is that she has not only picked 7 extremely diverse items, (dams, lighthouses, sewers, railroads, bridges, canals, and boats) but she manages to put them into the context of the history of that particular engineering feat, but also in context to the events of their own time.

Her research takes her right into the buidling as well - for instance with the building of the Great Eastern she talks about the need for large numbers of young boys who were employed inside the boat, working in appalling hot and cramped conditions and juggling white hot rivets. There were dreadful accidents but a steady supply of labour meant that new workers were never a problem. The sheer volume of workers however never even made it into the day book though, they were never considered important enough.

She relates this sheer volume of workers back to all these structures. They were all built through the enormous supply of labour available.

This does not denigrate the sheer feats of engineering which these men needed to create these structures. No one thought the Great Eastern would be able to sail. The London Sewers were built in competition with the Underground in London, The Transcontinental Railroad needed to have all the items shipped around by sea via the Cape to get to the WEstern Side of America. As an aside I would really recommend reading Laura INgalls Wilder's book on the Banks of Silver Lake, if you are interested in the Transcontinental as Wilder's father worked for a time on the Railroad and she describes the working day in excellent detail including how they 'flattened' out the prairies by hand.

I cannot emphasise enough how great the detail is in the book - for instance, the work on the Brooklyn Bridge laying the foundations lays bare the horrendous circumstances in which men worked, in 80 degree heat at the bottom of the river. Explosions at the edge of the caissons often resulted in blow outs of compressed air which would send a 'fury of debris and water" in a column as much as 500 feet in the air.

I saw the television series on this book but was very disappointed. It was reenactments and it just didn't bring the depth of detail which is in this book.

This is one of the best reads this year. I would strongly recommend it to anyone. Deborah Cadbury's books are excellent and she is on my must buy list.

Editorial Review:

A world that had changed little from the Middle Ages was altered beyond recognition by the pioneering genius of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Dreams of Iron and Steel, acclaimed historian Deborah Cadbury tells the heroic tale of the visionaries and ordinary workers who brought to life seven great wonders of the world that still have the power to awe and inspire us today. Fueled by Deborah Cadbury's characteristic scholarship and insight, this extraordinary chronicle re-creates the human odyssey of how our modern world was forged not only with rivets, grease, and steam but also with blood, sweat, and extreme imagination.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama (American Encounters/Global Interactions)

John Lindsay-Poland

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Emperors in the Jungle is an exposé of key episodes in the military involvement of the United States in Panama. Investigative journalism at its best, this book reveals how U.S. ideas about taming tropical jungles and people, combined with commercial and military objectives, shaped more than a century of intervention and environmental engineering in a small, strategically located nation. Whether uncovering the U.S. Army’s decades-long program of chemical weapons tests in Panama or recounting the invasion in December 1989 which was the U.S. military’s twentieth intervention in Panama since 1856, John Lindsay-Poland vividly portrays the extent and costs of U.S. involvement.

Analyzing new evidence gathered through interviews, archival research, and Freedom of Information Act requests, Lindsay-Poland discloses the hidden history of U.S.–Panama relations, including the human and environmental toll of the massive canal building project from 1904 to 1914. In stunning detail he describes secret chemical weapons tests—of toxins including nerve agent and Agent Orange—as well as plans developed in the 1960s to use nuclear blasts to create a second canal in Panama.

He chronicles sustained efforts by Panamanians and international environmental groups to hold the United States responsible for the disposal of the tens of thousands of explosives it left undetonated on the land it turned over to Panama in 1999. In the context of a relationship increasingly driven by the U.S. antidrug campaigns, Lindsay-Poland reports on the myriad issues that surrounded Panama’s takeover of the canal in accordance with the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, and he assesses the future prospects for the Panamanian people, land, and canal area. Bringing to light historical legacies unknown to most U.S. citizens or even to many Panamanians, Emperors in the Jungle is a major contribution toward a new, more open relationship between Panama and the United States.

The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas

Todd Balf

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

“Commit yourself to the Virgin Mary, for in her hands is the way into the Darién—and in God’s is the way out.”

The Darkest Jungle tells the harrowing story of America’s first ship canal exploration across a narrow piece of land in Central America called the Darién, a place that loomed large in the minds of the world’s most courageous adventurers in the nineteenth century. With rival warships and explorers from England and France days behind, the 27-member U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition landed on the Atlantic shore at Caledonia Bay in eastern Panama to begin their mad dash up the coast-hugging mountains of the Darién wilderness. The whole world watched as this party attempted to be the first to traverse the 40-mile isthmus, the narrowest spot between the Atlantic and Pacific in all the Americas.

Later, government investigators would say they were doomed before they started. Amid the speculative fever for an Atlantic and Pacific ship canal, the terrain to be crossed had been grossly misrepresented and fictitiously mapped. By January 27, 1854, the Americans had served out their last provisions and were severely footsore but believed the river they had arrived at was an artery to the Pacific, their destination. Leading them was the charismatic commander Isaac Strain, an adventuring 33-year-old U.S. Navy lieutenant. The party could have turned back except, said Strain, they were to a man “revolted at the idea” of failing at a task they seemed destined to accomplish. Like the first men to try to scale Everest or reach the North Pole, they felt the eyes of their countrymen upon them.

Yet Strain’s party would wander lost in the jungle for another sixty nightmarish days, following a tortuously contorted and uncharted tropical river. Their guns rusted in the damp heat, expected settlements never materialized, and the lush terrain provided little to no sustenance. As the unending march dragged on, the party was beset by flesh-embedding parasites and a range of infectious tropical diseases they had no antidote for (or understanding of). In the desperate final days, in the throes of starvation, the survivors flirted with cannibalism and the sickest men had to be left behind so, as the journal keeper painfully recorded, the rest might have a chance to live.

The U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition’s 97-day ordeal of starvation, exhaustion, and madness—a tragedy turned “triumph of the soul” due to the courage and self-sacrifice of their leader and the seamen who devotedly followed him—is one of the great untold tales of human survival and exploration. Based on the vividly detailed log entries of Strain and his junior officers, other period sources, and Balf’s own treks in the Darién Gap, this is a rich and utterly compelling historical narrative that will thrill readers who enjoyed In the Heart of the Sea, Isaac’s Storm, and other sagas of adventure at the limits of human endurance.