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Doubleday, Page & Company, 1914. Hardcover, x, 386 pp.; 21 cm; copyright 1913; illustrated with black-and-white photographic plates by Ernest Hallen, official photographer of the Isthmian Canal Commission, and a folding color frontispiece, "Bird's-Eye View of the Panama Canal" (courtesy National Geographic Magazine).
In Very Good condition with a Good dust jacket. Maroon fine-ribbed cloth boards, cream lettering on front and spine, bright. Mild shelf and edge wear, with some color loss at corner tips, head and foot of spine, and along spine edges; a few small pale marks low on spine. Binding tight. Pages mildly toned, otherwise unmarked; folding frontispiece intact. Final blank leaf creased at lower corner. Buff paper dust jacket printed in black, with a sepia photograph of a canal cut running across rear panel, spine and front, and George W. Goethals's endorsement ("I have read the chapters relating to engineering and found them accurate") with facsimile signature in cream on front. Flaps advertise Haskin's The American Government and The Immigrant, The Haskin Letter, and Woodrow Wilson's The New Freedom. Thin paper with horizontal fold crease across all panels, vertical creases at spine folds, wrinkling to upper spine panel, two parallel 1-inch slits through spine panel, chips and short tears along top and bottom edges, and a chip with paper loss at foot of spine; edges toned. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Account of the Panama Canal written for the general reader as the canal neared completion, by the author of The American Government and the syndicated Haskin Letter. Goethals, chairman and chief engineer of the Isthmian Canal Commission, read and corrected the engineering chapters. The preface notes that he asked for the chapter on himself, "The Man at the Helm," to be dropped; Haskin kept it and Goethals did not read it. Chapters cover Gatun Dam, the locks and their machinery, Culebra Cut, the Panama Railroad, sanitation, the commissary, the American and Black workforces, life in the Zone, the French failure, the controversy with Colombia, Canal Zone government, fortifications and tolls. Plates include the tugboat Gatun, the first boat through the Gatun Locks (26 September 1913), the Miraflores Locks under construction, hotels in Colon and Ancon, and the Ancon baseball park. Terminal advertisement leaf. Contents: The Land Divided, The World United; Greatest Engineering Project; Gatun Dam; The Locks; The Lock Machinery; Culebra Cut; Ends of the Canal; The Panama Railroad; Sanitation; The Man at the Helm; The Organization; The American Workers; The Negro Workers; The Commissary; Life on the Zone; Past Isthmian Projects; The French Failure; Choosing the Panama Route; Controversy with Colombia; Relations with Panama; Canal Zone Government; Congress and the Canal; Sea Level Canal Impossible; Fortifications; Fixing the Tolls; The Operating Force; Handling the Traffic; The Republic of Panama; Other Great Canals; A New Commercial Map; American Trade Opportunities; The Panama-Pacific Exposition; Index.