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.
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