Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal

by Zachary Karabell

Amazon Price: $27.50 (as of 10/07/2008)

This is the story of the building of the Suez Canal. The idea of a canal first gained currency with the invasion of Egypt in 1798 by Napoleon. Several odd mystical intellectuals promoted the canal but the leader came to be diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, a practical, ambitious fellow who conceived the canal as a monument to himself. The canal was finished in 1869 and royalty from all over Europe flocked to Egypt for its inauguration.

Most of the book concerns Lesseps and his diplomatic and commercial machinations to get both political approval for the canal and the money to build it. The most interesting of the politicians in the book are the Egyptian leaders, Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Said, and Ismail, whose effort to westernize while staving off the West were ultimately futile. One wonders how history might have been different if these three Egyptian leaders and Egypt might have been treated with more consideration by the Western powers. Lesseps, much as one might admire his steadfastness, is not a very likeable person, nor are any of the other Westerners in the book.

Karabell is an excellent writer and the book never lags in attention. As one person's opinion, however, I would have appreciated a little less focus on wacko intellectuals and high-society hijinks and more on the challenges faced by the engineers and the construction workers on the ground. There is only one unreadable map -- when will publishers learn that good maps are essential to a book? -- and not enough detail about the extraordinary engineering challenges faced by the builders.