presented keynote lectures at universities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Indonesia. In addition to working as an adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago, he is the immediate past chair of the American Association of Geographers’ Religions and Belief Systems research specialty group and serves as associate editor of the Journal of Jewish Education. In his free time, he enjoys long-distance running and exploring the culture and language of his favorite country, Indonesia.
Samson applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Earth Shapers: How We Mapped and Mastered the World, from the Panama Canal to the Baltic Way, and reported the following:
Page 99 brings readers about three quarters of the way through the third chapter, which examines how people have molded and remolded the planet to make travel more convenient. Specifically, the chapter draws attention to the somewhat controversial development and administration of the Panama Canal; the excerpt quoted below covers one of the final episodes before the USA handed over control to Panama:Visit Maxim Samson's website.And so, when insistent words and the withdrawal of economic and military aid failed to pressure Noriega to stand down, in late 1989 the United States opted to initiate its last assertive hurrah in Panama. Contending that democracy, US citizens’ lives in Panama and the very integrity of the Torrijos–Carter Treaties were all threatened by a military dictator who had turned the country into a loathsome hub of drug trafficking, President George H. W. Bush’s forces succeeded in chasing down and ousting a former ally in a matter of weeks, via a highly unorthodox method. Having learned that this notorious drug smuggler with a penchant for prostitutes was hiding out in the unlikely confines of the Holy See’s diplomatic offices in Panama City, the Americans’ successful strategy involved blaring out a playlist of rock anthems with a common theme: ‘Manuel, your days in charge are numbered’. Though many international observers were outraged by what they viewed as a flagrant violation of Panama’s sovereignty and international law – the invasion, that is, not the refrains of ‘No More Mister Nice Guy’ by Alice Cooper or ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ by Bon Jovi – and the United Nations General Assembly condemned the invasion by a vote of seventy-five to twenty, few in Panama seemed to care. Finally, Americans and Panamanians appeared to be on the same page, assured that with the strongman out of the picture, the connective infrastructure the United States had built and managed according to its own interests could now work to Panama’s benefit as well.This excerpt offers readers only fragments of Earth Shapers’ central theme—how through our fashioning of geographical connections, humans have guided the course of history—as it focuses rather narrowly on one of the book’s eight case studies. One can learn far more about how the Panama Canal fits within the book as a whole by reviewing the following page, which commences the conclusion to this chapter. Even so, a reader of page 99 can glean certain insights about Earth Shapers, not least my (hopefully) accessible writing style and my commitment to finding surprising and intriguing events relevant to my book, as I portray the farcical story of US forces passive-aggressively playing rock music to smoke Panama’s controversial general Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican’s embassy. While the following page is more explicit about this point, page 99 also hints at the USA’s close interest in Panamanian political affairs, a reality that endures, albeit primarily now in relation to China’s geopolitical influence, to the present day.
--Marshal Zeringue
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