Colossal

Three Frenchmen-Eiffel, Lesseps, and Bartholdi-were the moving spirits behind all four colossi of the Suez Canal, Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower and Panama Canal. This highly original book by Darcy Grigsby, a professor of art history at Berkeley, presents their extraordinary, interlinked history. It begins with Napoleon in Egypt and ends with the building of the Panama Canal, taking in other colossal enterprises along the way. The book brings engineering into the history of art for the first time. Amply illustrated, it crosses between the histories of art, technology, and engineering as well as with cultural and political history.