The Canal Builders by Julie Greene - Book Review #301

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

Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen - Book Report #186

This was a difficult book to get through, not because it was a hard read (I experienced it as an audio book) but because the subject matter was so difficult to digest.

The author, Jacobsen, did a staggering amount of research which I was so very impressed by.

I had a vague notion of Operation Paperclip - I knew it had something to do with the assimilation of Nazi scientists, the most notable of them all was Wernher von Braun who was instrumental in the design of the Saturn V rocket that took Americans to the moon.

But what did he do during the war?  What did he see?  What was he responsible for?

The questions were repeated many times for a surprising amount of men who were moved to the United States and exploited for their knowledge.

This book brought me to wonder just how important is it to stay ahead of the "enemy?"

Some good has come from all of this but the source material is truly terrifying and made me feel that there is no real hope for humanity.  We are so consumed with gaining power and killing each other that I wonder if there is any real hope for our species.

And much of the methods of killing, poison gas for instance, was simply added to the arsenal and perfected by the West.

I highly recommend this book.

It is truly a work that will help to heal the world that is, surprisingly, still influenced by the horrors of World War Two.

But be ready for it, Jacobsen does a commendable job of staying neutral in her reporting.  She just lays it out from the records that have been recently declassified.

It is a difficult thing to learn.

Annie Jacobsen website - http://anniejacobsen.com/

Annie Jacobsen