Zachary Karabell - Parting the Desert

ACCLAIM FOR ZACHARY KARABELLS

P ARTING THE D ESERT

A fascinating saga: of diplomacy involving primarily the French and the Egyptians, of raising gigantic sums of money, of overcoming massive geographical and technological obstacles long before the invention of mechanized earth-moving equipment. The business aspects sometimes seem as if they are ripped from last months headlines.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A rich and engaging narrative of one of the greatest engineering feats of the nineteenth century [with] resonance beyond its time.

Alexander Stille, author of The Future of the Past

An absorbing, well-written narrative. [Karabell gives] dimension to the personalities, eccentricities and strengths of key figures. [A] fascinating account.

San Antonio Express-News

Karabell tells his story elegantly distilling a large cast spread across several countries into a manageable one. Karabell seldom wastes a sentence as he offers one well-chosen anecdote after another that sheds light on the greater drama of this important and historic construction project.

Charleston Gazette

A fascinating, epic, elegiac story. Zachary Karabells account of the political intrigue, quixotic dreamers, and engineering genius that led to the construction of the Suez Canal vividly brings to life one of the underappreciated marvels of the modern world. The book is a triumph of history and art.

Bruce Feiler, author of Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths

A tale shot through with unexpected twists. Karabell tells his story concisely and with narrative skill, peppering the account with many wry anecdotes.

The Jerusalem Post

Engrossing. As accessible and vividly written as a novel it maintains a page-turning pace. Superbly researched, it is a volume to keep.

The Sunday Times (London)

Zachary Karabell has written an absorbing narrative [He] traces with skill the complex diplomatic and engineering feat [and] prompts reflections about the futility of human effort and the evanescence of glory.

The Times Literary Supplement (London)

A riveting story, and Karabell tells it handsomely. An exceptional book, one of the best of its kind I have read.

George Rosie, Sunday Herald

Well-researched and very well-written. The tens of thousands of the Egyptian fellahin peasantry who dug the canal did indeed part the desert, and their story cannot have been better told than by this fine book.

The Sunday Telegraph (London)

Fascinating elegiac. Parting the Desert is an excellent story, skillfully told. Even those who are bored to tears by canals, whose eyes glaze over at the first mention of engineering, will find themselves, as this reader did, racing through it.

Justin Marozzi, Literary Review

ZACHARY KARABELL

P ARTING THE D ESERT

Zachary Karabell was educated at Columbia; Oxford, where he received a degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies; and Harvard, where he received his Ph.D. in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Dartmouth. He is the author of several books, including The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election, which won the Chicago Tribune Heartland prize. His essays and reviews have appeared in various publications, such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, and Newsweek. Karabell lives in New York City.

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