Book Reviews and Notices : And the Mountains Will Move: The Story of the Building of the Panama Canal. BY MILES P. DUVAL, JR. (Stanford University: Stanford University Press. 1947. Pp. xvi, 3 74. $5.00. )

• DOI: 10.1177/106591294800100329
• Date: 01 September 1948
• Author: Thomas B. Oberlinter
• Published date: 01 September 1948
• Subject Matter: Articles

334
This book is a commendable addition to the growing but as yet small
library of twentieth century American political history. In style and or-
ganization it is a model of what popular political history ought to be, and
while it lacks the broad general scope of some other works in this field, it is
far more detailed and precise in its handling of significant political matter.
Mention of its extensive bibliography completes this summing up of a book
which instructors will find a most helpful addition to their lists of assigned
supplementary reading in courses of political science and American history.
BERNARD L. KRONICK.
Sacramento State College.
And the Mountains Will Move: The Story of the Building of the Panama
Canal. BY MILES P. DUVAL, JR. (Stanford University: Stanford Uni-
versity Press. 1947. Pp. xvi, 3 74. $5.00. )
This book, based on a detailed investigation of a mass of material, is an
important contribution to our knowledge pertaining to the construction of
the Panama Canal. In this balanced and readable account DuVal covers
the period from the beginning of the Panama Railroad in 1849 to the open-
ing of the Canal in 1914.
The author devotes the first third of the book to placing the railroad
and the French attempts at construction in their proper perspective in the
Canal’s history. He points out that without a railroad no canal could have
been built and he maintains that the significance of the French effort has
never been fully appreciated in the United States. The present canal fol-
lows the route of the French surveys, and the lessons learned as a result of
their failures were highly instrumental in the successful completion of the
Canal by the United States.
Emphasis throughout is placed upon engineering and construction, but
the human element, from the common laborer with the spade to the chief
engineer with the slide rule, is not overlooked. Almost one fourth of the
book is devoted to evaluating John F. Stevens, the second United States
chief...