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Title: Parting the Desert : The Creation of the Suez Canal by Zachary Karabell ISBN: 0-375-40883-5 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 20 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Little Errors
Comment: On page three the author declares that Louis IX, St.. Louis, died at Damietta, in Egypt. He repeats this on page 13. Louis IX died in Tunis, years after leaving Damietta. The place of Louis IX's death has no bearing on the subject of the book but the error suggests that the author deals with facts in a rather offhand way.
Rating: 4
Summary: West Meets East
Comment: Parting the Desert is a most informative book for those who know nothing of the Suez Canal. Zachary Karabell, the author, explains how the construction of this important waterway was accomplished. I quickly learned that the difficulties in creating the canal were more political than technological.
Ferdinand De Lesseps is the major hero in this story. This citizen of France was a diplomat before he became interested in building the Suez Canal. Indeed, the talents of a good diplomat were what was required to deal with all the nations who opposed, impeded, or were skeptical about the canal. De Lesseps played a delicate balancing act that allowed him to outmaneuver Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and at least one reluctant Egyptian head of state. At the same time, he rounded up the money to finance such a huge undertaking and kept banks and investors at bay while the project was completed. Unfortunately, after achieving this success, De Lesseps failed miserably attempting a similar canal in Panama. This failure was so great he only escaped being jailed for fraud because of age and ill health.
The canal was a wonderful benefit for the western nations. Unfortunately, Egypt was not so lucky. The tragedy of the canal is how little benefit was bestowed upon Egypt and the Egyptian people by its construction and use. Bad financial decisions by Egyptian officials resulted in the country being forced to sell its shares of stock in the canal company, as well as its right to receive profits from ship transit. The country was essentially rendered totally subservient to European powers for decades. The canal only really became Egyptian after 1956.
The Suez canal is no longer as important as it once was. Much oil now travels by pipeline instead of tanker ships. Some super tankers are too large to travel through the canal and sail around the horn of Africa instead. None of this diminishes the achievement involved in building the canal, or its importance in the past.
Its a most interesting story and one all world historians will enjoy.
Rating: 5
Summary: A man, a plan, a canal
Comment: This is a very well-written book on the history of the Suez Canal, from the inception of the idea for its digging until today. There's not a lot of description of the actual work that was involved; we are primarily given the political and diplomatic machinations that were involved in the beginning of the work, and continuing until it opened, and beyond. There are thumbnail sketches of the major players, and they were quite interesting. There are also occasional mistakes of fact in the book, which should have been caught by a good editor. The first time Napoleon III is introduced, he's called Napoleon's son, but later in the book he is correctly identified as his nephew. Also, the date for the conquest of Constantinople is given as two different years in two different places. They didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book, but they were distracting nevertheless. Not knowing a lot about the history involved in the Suez Canal, I enjoyed this book very much.
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Title: Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie ISBN: 0679456716 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander ISBN: 067003133X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 15 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0066212855 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Transatlantic : Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunel, and the Great Atlantic Steamships by Stephen Fox ISBN: 0060195959 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen ISBN: 0066211735 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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