Karabell, Zachary. Parting the Desert: the creation of the Suez Canal. New York: Random House, Inc., 2003. Print.

I found this book by searching the term “Suez Canal”. In class, our discussion of the Suez Canal was brief and in the context of British conquest so I was interested in the Canal itself. I thought it was interesting that the book was in a section that was more about engineering and the actual creation of dams and canals that anything about the Suez Canal; titles surrounding my chosen book were Water and the American Government, Delaware and Lehigh Canals, and Drainage and Water Table Control. This book piqued my interest because it had the most colorful cover and it had a picture of Ferdinand de Lesseps, on the binding. The book is about the events leading up to the building of the Suez Canal and it’s cultural significance. It talks about how the canal was the convergence of two cultures, French and Egyptian, and even discusses the Egyptian hopes for the canal to lead to a national renaissance and restore power in the Mediterranean and how the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps found support and funding to start and complete the project, while neutralizing the Ottoman sultan. The book is broken up into 20 chapters, a few of which are “The French Fall in Love”, “Egypt and Rome”, and “The Desert is Parted”.  In the middle of the book are images of the relevant leaders of France and Egypt as well as some of the canal being built and being used. Overall, the argument of the book is that something once beautiful, the product of brilliance, can become a symbol of greed and even a scar, rebuking the initial goal of the creator.