Please join us for a reading and book signing on Wednesday, July 15 at noon for Julie Greene’s The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal has long been celebrated as a triumph of American engineering and technology. In The Canal Builders, Julie Greene lifts up the tens of thousands of workingmen and women who traveled from around the world to build it. From 1904 to 1914, in one of the greatest labor mobilizations ever, working people traveled to Panama from all over the globe from farms and industrial towns in the United States, sugarcane plantations in the West Indies, and rocky fields in Spain and Italy. When they arrived, they faced harsh and inequitable conditions: labor unions were forbidden, workers were paid differently based on their race and nationality with the most dangerous jobs falling to West Indians and anyone not contributing to the project could be deported. Yet Greene reveals how canal workers and their families managed to resist government demands for efficiency at all costs, forcing many officials to revise their policies.

“A fascinating look at those who actually built the canal...a telling portrait of exploitation, privilege, and insularity, backed by a mountain of fresh research.”

—David Oshinsky in the NYT Book Review

“In this extraordinary book, Julie Greene has given us the first complete history of the Panama Canal by chronicling the international labor force that built it, the flawed politicians and engineers who designed it, and the utopian notions it inspired in many Americans. The Canal Builders is a landmark in the history of workers in the modern world, filled with revelations on nearly every page.”

—Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan

The event is co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO, the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA.)

A light lunch will be served.