By Matthew Parker
The Panama Canal used to be the most expensive venture in background; its finishing touch in 1914 marked the start of the “American Century.” Panama Fever attracts on modern debts, bringing the adventure of these who equipped the canal vividly to existence. Politicians engaged in high-stakes international relations for you to impact its building. in the meantime, engineers and staff from world wide rushed to exploit excessive wages and the opportunity to be part of background. jam-packed with extraordinary characters, Panama Fever is an epic heritage that indicates how a small, fiercely contested strip of land made the area a smaller position and introduced the period of yank worldwide dominance.
Read or Download Panama Fever: The Epic Story of the Building of the Panama Canal (Vintage) PDF
Best epic books
Deadhouse Gates (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 2)
Uploader word: bought from Amazon and stripped myself.
In the mammoth dominion of 7 towns, within the Holy wasteland Raraku, the seer Sha'ik and her fans organize for the long-prophesied rebellion referred to as the Whirlwind. extraordinary in measurement and savagery, this maelstrom of fanaticism and bloodlust will embroil the Malazan Empire in a single of the bloodiest conflicts it has ever identified, shaping destinies and giving delivery to legends . . .
Set in a brilliantly discovered global ravaged via darkish, uncontrollable magic, this exciting novel of struggle, intrigue and betrayal confirms Steven Erikson as a storyteller of breathtaking ability, mind's eye and originality--the writer who has written the 1st nice fable epic of the hot millennium.
Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles, Bk. 3)
After a long time of peace within the Lands of fellows, there got here Dragon climate: a wave of really good warmth, oppressive humidity, darkish indignant clouds . . . and dragons. Dragons without regret, no sympathy, little need for people; dragons who destroyed a whole village and everybody in it. each person, that's, other than the younger boy Arlian.
Imajica (The Fifth Dominion, Book 1)
The mystical story of ill-fated fanatics misplaced between worlds teetering at the fringe of destruction, the place their ardour holds the most important to flee. There hasn't ever been a e-book like Imajica. reworking each expectation offantasy fiction with its heady mingling of radical sexuality and non secular anarchy, it has carried its hundreds of thousands of readers into areas of ardour and philosophy that few books have even tried to map.
- Seventh Sword 2, Coming of Wisdom
- Destiny of the Sword (Seventh Sword, Book 3)
- The Nibelungenlied: Prose Translation
- Malice
Extra info for Panama Fever: The Epic Story of the Building of the Panama Canal (Vintage)
Example text
Soon abandoned ships lay seven deep in San Francisco harbor. The result was a huge throng stranded in Panama City, at one point more than four thousand. Those who could not find or afford a bunk set up filthy camps on the outskirts, where what they inevitably called “Panama Fever”—malaria, yellow fever, and dysentery—began to strike them down. Some were so desperate to leave that they even set off for California in canoes. The frustration was increased when men started appearing on their way back to the East Coast, a lucky few carrying a fortune in gold dust and nuggets.
The result was a huge throng stranded in Panama City, at one point more than four thousand. Those who could not find or afford a bunk set up filthy camps on the outskirts, where what they inevitably called “Panama Fever”—malaria, yellow fever, and dysentery—began to strike them down. Some were so desperate to leave that they even set off for California in canoes. The frustration was increased when men started appearing on their way back to the East Coast, a lucky few carrying a fortune in gold dust and nuggets.
Even in 1914, when the Isthmus was supposedly “sanitized” by the Americans, over half the workforce was hospitalized at some point during the year. Apart from actual wars, it is the costliest project ever yet attempted in history, as ambitious a construction as the Great Pyramids. Hundreds of millions of francs were invested—and lost—during the ten-year struggle by the French in the 1880s, and the Americans spent nearly $400 million between 1904 and 1914, in the days when a couple of dollars a day was a good working wage.