Another great history by David McCullough about the creation of the Panama Canal. There’s only one of his books that I haven’t liked and out of courtesy to him I will not name it. Without getting into a whole lot of history about the Panama Canal at one point the US was arguing over whether or not to build the canal in Nicaragua which did not have the problems with yellow fever, mosquitoes and swamps but which would have been a much more difficult project because of how much higher the land was that they would have to dig down through to make a pathway.

The US Senate was having debates over the decision. What finally threw the decision back to Panama where the French had failed was a stamp issued by Nicaragua showing an active volcano!

Our author had many excellent photographs in the book but lacked a picture of that stamp. Being a philatelist (stamp collector) I own many copies of that stamp series from Nicaragua. Publishing it for you it reminds me of the time The Economist of London published a picture of Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction because the US press was too prudish to do it. Nothing so exciting about a volcano on a stamp though.