The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal

A revelatory look at a momentous undertaking-from theworkers' point of view

The Panama Canal has long been celebrated as atriumph of American engineering and ingenuity. In The CanalBuilders, Julie Greene reveals that this emphasis has obscureda far more remarkable element of the historic enterprise: the tensof thousands of workingmen and workingwomen who traveled from allaround the world to build it. Greene looks past the mythologysurrounding the canal to expose the difficult working conditionsand discriminatory policies involved in its construction. Drawingextensively on letters, memoirs, and government documents, the bookchronicles both the struggles and the triumphs of the workers andtheir fami?lies. Prodigiously researched and vividly told, TheCanal Builders explores the human dimensions of one of theworld's greatest labor mobilizations, and reveals how it launchedAmerica's twentieth-century empire.