Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal
I enjoyed the angle the author took on this legendary infrastructure project, that of the people who built it and manged the endeavour.
People from all over the world came to work on it but it was also a product of its time - systemic racism, brutal working conditions, undervalued human needs and American hegemony made the reality of the construction an ugly thing.
But this was the reality of the times, it was normal. It would never stand today. Which made me wonder, could it even be achieved today?
The book illustrates just how far we've come in our respective societies from that day and how far we still have to go. Throughout our history there has always been an "us" and a "them." Nothing has really changed in that respect just the definition of us and them.
Still, this is an important document to the history of the Panama Canal and it's construction. It focused on people instead of the engineering and I appreciated that.
Julie Green's website - https://history.umd.edu/users/jmg
Audio book narrated by Karen White
 |
| Julie Greene |
No comments:
Post a Comment