copyright 1913; "Illustrated by Color Photography from the Original Autochrome Photographs"; Moffat, Yard and Company publishers, New York; hardbound with gilt lettering on front ( a bit faded - pic); quite good condition with unmarked pages; original owner's signature inside front cover (bottom) artfully done; full of large photos individually pasted down on pages; a lovely, historic book.
 
The Panama Canal -
This ambitious engineering feat, linking the Pacific and Atlantic, finally opened in August 1914 just as the world’s attention was diverted by rather more pressing matters which rather stole the thunder of a project which provided a template for the exercise of US power over foreign countries that continues to this day...
 
A canal through the Isthmus of Panama had been a long held ambition for a large number of interest groups and prior to the present canal the French under de Lesseps, who had completed the Suez Canal in the 1869, attempted to carve out a channel on this site during the 1880s and set up a commercial company to build it. However, the toll of disease, high death rates, a rapid turnover in staff and the sheer enormity of the task for an army of labourers armed only with picks and shovels, constantly battling with landslides, made it impossible for a private company to make a profit out of the venture and it was abandoned in 1893...
 
The [canal] project was then revived under American auspices as a both a prestige project to showcase US engineering and technological might as well as to conclusively demonstrate that they had arrived as a serious global power. Unlike the French, Roosevelt was keen to ensure that the completed canal remained under direct US government control and would serve their interests first and foremost.