Review: Seaway to the Future: American Social Visions and the Construction of the Panama Canal by Alexander Missal; The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal by Julie Greene

Abstract

Book Review| March 01 2011 Review: Seaway to the Future: American Social Visions and the Construction of the Panama Canal by Alexander Missal; The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal by Julie Greene Alexander Missal. Seaway to the Future: American Social Visions and the Construction of the Panama Canal. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, 267 pp., 34 b/w illus. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780299229405Julie Greene. The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal. New York: Penguin Press, 2009, 496 pp., 37 b/w illus. $30 (cloth), ISBN 9781594202018 Robert J. Kapsch Robert J. Kapsch Center for Historic Engineering and Architecture Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2011) 70 (1): 121–123. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2011.70.1.121 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robert J. Kapsch; Review: Seaway to the Future: American Social Visions and the Construction of the Panama Canal by Alexander Missal; The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal by Julie Greene. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 March 2011; 70 (1): 121–123. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2011.70.1.121 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search The story of the Panama Canal's construction has been told many times, notably by David McCullough in his bestseller The Path Between the Seas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977). Begun in May 1904, the forty-mile (64-km) canal was built by the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC), a civilian branch of the U. S. Department of War. It was completed by August 1914 at a cost of $352 million. During that decade, 150,000 people, mostly West Indians, worked on the project. What Alexander Missal, a German journalist with a PhD in Anglo-American History from the University of Cologne, and Julie Greene, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, have achieved in their books is to add valuable new dimensions to our understanding of the canal's construction and reception, and of the daily lives of those who built it. In Seaway to the Future Missal recaptures the early significance to... You do not currently have access to this content.