Award-winning historian Zachary Karabell tells the epic story of the
greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century--the building of the
Suez Canal-- and shows how it changed the world.
The dream was a waterway that would unite the East and the West, and the
ambitious, energetic French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de
Lesseps was the mastermind behind the project. Lesseps saw the project
through fifteen years of financial challenges, technical obstacles, and
political intrigues. He convinced ordinary French citizens to invest
their money, and he won the backing of Napoleon III and of Egypt's
prince Muhammad Said. But the triumph was far from perfect: the
construction relied heavily on forced labor and technical and diplomatic
obstacles constantly threatened completion. The inauguration in 1869
captured the imagination of the world. The Suez Canal was heralded as a
symbol of progress that would unite nations, but its legacy is mixed.
Parting the Desert is both a transporting narrative and a meditation on
the origins of the modern Middle East.