Best Central American History
The National Book Award–winning epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal, a first-rate drama of the bold and brilliant engineering feat that was filled with both tragedy and triumph, told by master historian David McCullough. On December 31, 1999, after nearly a century of rule, the United States officially ceded ownership of the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama. A wave of fortune seekers descended on Panama from Europe and the eastern United States, seeking quick passage on California-bound ships in the Pacific, and the Panama Railroad, built to serve that traffic, was soon the highest-priced stock listed on the New York Exchange.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Because the French effort was publicly financed most of the detail concerns all the financial schemes needed to keep this project moving ahead. While this was important information to know as the basis for the subsequent American effort I do believe that it was vastly overdone and could have benefited from serious editing. In the history of this canal you have innovative people from a variety of disciplines from medicine to engineering, from management to human resources and it was fascinating to read about their problems and the solutions they devised to solve them. But I will grant that much of the fascination a reader could have had from this book was diluted by the cumbersome length and depth of detail."
"And I just want to say, in my opinion, Godin de Lepinay is really the unsung hero of the Panama Canal, the true genius behind the construction of the Canal. But in my going through the Canal the greatest engineering feature that struck me, was the one de Lepinay was the first to propose. I had no idea until I read the book who was the first to come up with the idea, but the book did mention it, and it was de Lepinay."
"My only complaint was it was a very long book but with that being said I enjoyed all the detail, relationships, antagonisms, bureaucracy, pitfalls (numerous), data, weather complications, Panamanian lifestyle, and tragically the loss of life."
"Incredible story of brave people, engineering and construction, exploration, health and sanitation. As between finance, politics and engineering, the latter is key to successful completion of a real-world project; the former two are also necessary and were poured in abundantly by French and Americans. A few slow spots are bogged by excessive detail, but the story is thoroughly researched and documented and oh so real and alive."
In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century. An Amazon Best Book of January 2017: In 2012, author Douglas Preston joined a team of explorers searching for Ciudad Blanca (“The White City”), a legendary ruin hidden in the dense jungle of eastern Honduras. In addition to the objective hazards of tropical disease, wild boars, and the deadly fer-de-lance viper, locals stoked the mystique, describing various curses awaiting would-be discoverers. But this team had an advantage that previous searchers had lacked: LIDAR, an advanced laser-imaging technology able to penetrate the dense jungle canopy – just enough – and return detailed elevation profiles from which subtle, man-made anomalies could be identified. The fledgling Honduran government, having gained power through a military coup, sought to use the discovery to bolster its status with the population, while the academic community ripped the expedition with accusations of Indiana Jones-style exploitation and shoddy scientific methods, cries which could be uncharitably interpreted as sour grapes. And by invoking Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel , Preston speculates on the mysterious, sudden demise of the White City and its inhabitants, drawing ominous parallels between their fate and possibly our own. He has instead created something nuanced and sublime: a warm and geeky paean to the revelatory power of archaeology....Few other writers possess such heartfelt appreciation for the ways in which artifacts can yield the stories of who we are.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This is NOT a book authored by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child that continues the adventures of Special Agent A. Pendergast and his unique circle of friends and assorted characters. However this is an intriguing and very interesting documentary written by Douglas Preston that takes you inside the planning and execution of a continual search for a mythical lost city (and/or civilization) that until 2015 remained nothing more than rumor and myth(s). You won't find a photograph of Harrison Ford inside the dust jacket but you will see a grinning shot of Douglas Preston bearing an uncanny resemblance to the (deceased) actor Edward Herrmann. A combination of legends and myths, some completely false and yet others bearing an element of truth, have circulated about this area, both intriguing and cautioning researchers and potential explorers."
"As engaging as a fictional archeological expedition."
"A fly over with imaging gear would be the thing to do."
"Douglas Preston (and his partner Lincoln Child) are quite possibly the best tandem writers in the world today."
"This is a modern day true adventure story."
"A classic read where it teleports you from your safe, clean, parasite free home and drops you straight into the perilous jungle of snakes and bugs and swashbuckling adventurers."
"Thoughtfully written, engaging and enlightening."
"into the jungles of Honduras is a captivating tale of danger at every turn and a fantastic discovery that's lain hidden for centuries."
In Havana Nocturne , T.J. English offers a multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution & international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana & the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr & Albert Anastasia—& Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—& how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the revolution. True-crime writer English ( Paddy Whacked ) presents an empire-building saga in which the "Havana Mob" of American gangsters, led by visionary financier Meyer Lansky, controlled Cuba. Empowered by permissive gambling laws and payoffs to dictator Fulgencio Batista, the Mafia poured millions into posh hotels, casinos and nightclubs, skimmed huge profits and sought to make Havana its financial headquarters. English revels in purple prose ("the island seethed like a bitch with a low-grade fever") and decadent details, including an orgy with Frank Sinatra and a bevy of prostitutes that was interrupted by autograph-seeking Girl Scouts and a nun.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The book covers a screen shot in the entire history of Cuba, but certainly gives perspective on why Havana is how it is today-- from the gorgeous buildings, (now run down, but the bones of beauty are still there."
"It brought back memories of when a friend of mine sneaked his fathers old home movies of gambling trips to the Island out to a group of very young grade school kids who were duly impressed with the bright lights and celebratory atmosphere of the harbor."
"TJ English demonstrates how the American Mafia, in a venture led by Jewish mobster Meyer Lanksy, essentially infiltrated and took over a sovereign nation."
"This book is exactly what I wanted."
"This book is very well written."
"We backed Batista, while Batista allowed the mob to fleece Cuba and tourists, just as long as we could get minerals and sugar for next to nothing."
"I bought this for my Kindle and liked it so much, I bought this copy to send to a friend."
"This historical narrative dispels many of the revolution myths attributed to Castro, even as the Batista regime which inspired it is hardly mentioned in many Cuban conversations."
Best South American History
Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. The beauty of this story is not just that Roosevelts rich history could spawn a thousand adventure stories, but that Millards experience with National Geographic is evident in her beautiful scenic descriptions and grisly depictions of the Amazons man-eating catfish, ferocious piranhas, white-water rapids, and prospect of starvation. A story deep in symbolism and thick with research, Millard succeeds where many have not; she has managed to contain a little bit of Teddy Roosevelts energy and warm interactions between the covers of her wonderful new book.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The story of this journey into the unexplored Amazon and the men who made it is full of adventure, danger and the bonds forged by men dealing with the kind of adversity that is not known today."
"The author also does a great job of adding color to the story by explaining things that the participants themselves had now way of knowing such as dangers of the jungle and its inhabitants that were completely obscured to the expedition party."
"Not the best book I've ever read, but a fun story and a nice start to learning about Roosevelt."
"Theodore Roosevelt, like Abraham Lincoln, was a fascinating person on many levels, and, as such, it is easy to be captivated by him. But writing about his life and his accomplishments is a lot easier than conveying the the heart and soul of the man. If all the things that occur in a person's life, the thoughts, the feelings, the events big and small, the intersecting lives, the loves, the friends, the enemies, the colleagues, the rivals all could be represented as strings, Ms. Millard shows the weaving of these strings into the rope that was the man himself. Hostile natives; blistering heat; ferocious animals, seen and unseen; rain; disease; floods."
"The end result of reading this book is a desire to learn more about Theodore Roosevelt (and maybe re-read a couple of Tarzan novels) and that, I think, is the measure of good biography."
"This book was well researched and well written with a mix of quotes from journals of the explorers with added background information on the Amazon rain forest that included research from before and since 1912."
"I had recently read Edmund Morris's second volume on TR and subsequently waded through Doris Kearns Goodwin's Bully Pulpit. She managed to make things that I would probably never consciously choose to read about (like the Amazon ecosystem) riveting to read about. In fact, I immediately ordered and read Millard's second book (Destiny of the Republic) about the assassination of James Garfield."
Best Mexican History
From the author of the forthcoming book, Valiant Ambition , the riveting and critically acclaimed bestseller, soon to be a major motion picture starring Chris Hemsworth, directed by Ron Howard, premiering on December 11, 2015 Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson will star in a new film based on this National Book Award–winning account of the true events behind Moby Dick . Nathaniel Philbrick 's In the Heart of the Sea is certainly cast from the same mold, examining the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story that inspired Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. The epicenter of the whaling industry was Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod; most of the whales were in the Pacific, necessitating a huge journey around the southernmost tip of South America. A maritime historian, Philbrick recounts the hellish wreck of the Essex (which inspired Melville's Moby-Dick) and its sailors' struggle to make their way to South America, 2,000 miles away. Philbrick shows how the Quaker establishment of Nantucket ran a hugely profitable whaling industry in the 18th and 19th centuries and provides a detailed account of shipboard life.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"AND THEN THE STORY EPITOMIZED THE GLEEFUL BLOOD LUST OF THE KILL FROM THE NANTUCKET SLEIGH RIDE TO THE FOUL DISMEMBERMENT OF THE NOBLE WHALE. IN THIS STORY IT SIMPLY PUT AN END ANY MORE KILLING BY THE MEN OF THE ESSEX."
"Very good book, and a great story."
"Interesting."
"I thoroughly enjoyed this true story."
"Based on watching the trailer, I'm very happy that I read the book first."
"Very entertaining and well researched, and it is a fascinating look at the life of whaling men, and those back on shore as well during that time period."
"Not for the weak of heart."
"I recently read other books by Philbrick, Bunker Hill and Valiant Ambition which I liked very much."