A revelatory look at a momentous undertaking-from the
workers'' point of view
The Panama Canal has long been celebrated as a
triumph of American engineering and ingenuity. In The Canal
Builders, Julie Greene reveals that this emphasis has obscured
a far more remarkable element of the historic enterprise: the tens
of thousands of workingmen and workingwomen who traveled from all
around the world to build it. Greene looks past the mythology
surrounding the canal to expose the difficult working conditions
and discriminatory policies involved in its construction. Drawing
extensively on letters, memoirs, and government documents, the book
chronicles both the struggles and the triumphs of the workers and
their fami?lies. Prodigiously researched and vividly told, The
Canal Builders explores the human dimensions of one of the
world''s greatest labor mobilizations, and reveals how it launched
America''s twentieth-century empire.
關於作者:
Julie Greene is a professor of history at the
University of Maryland at College Park and the author of Pure
and Simple Politics. She has been awarded fellowships from the
National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of
Learned Societies.