In 1904, the United States government rented a strip of land, 10 miles wide by 50 miles long, from the Republic of Panama and created one of the world's greatest engineering feats, the Panama Canal. In the areas on either side of the Canal, small towns with all the accoutrements needed for the families of the workers cropped up. Thousands of children called these towns "home" and even today refer to themselves as "Canal Zone Brats." As a memorial of those great days, Kathleen Cox Richardson has written a collection of coming-of-age anecdotes of the first 22 years of her life in the Panama Canal Zone. This is her story: Canal Zone Brats Forever.

These true personal stories of miracles, angels, answered prayers, messages from heaven, miraculous healing, amazing coincidences, divine timing and divine intervention will give you hope and deepen your faith. We call them "miracles," "remarkable coincidences," and "divine interventions." The truth is, we're not at all sure what they are. What we do know is that they happen every day to people from all walks of life, and they can't be explained. But what stories they make! Be prepared to be amazed, inspired, and comforted by these 101 true, personal stories. Chicken Soup for the Soul books are 100% made in the USA and each book includes stories from as diverse a group of writers as possible. Chicken Soup for the Soul solicits and publishes stories from the LGBTQ community and from people of all ethnicities, nationalities, and religions.

Try new things, overcome your fears, and broaden your world. You’ll feel empowered and energized when you get out of your comfort zone! Whether it’s something little—like trying a new food—or something big—like flying to a faraway country—we feel empowered when we do something that challenges us. You can do it! John Shedd said, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” Set sail from your safe harbor. Feel the wind, see new sights, and make your world bigger. The eleven chapters in this book will help you: 1. Reinvent Yourself 2. Face Your Fears 3. Believe in Yourself 4. Challenge Yourself 5. Try Something New 6. Be Daring 7. Follow Your Dreams 8. Go Far Away 9. Just Say Yes 10. Put Yourself Out There 11. Reach Out and Connect Chicken Soup for the Soul books are 100% made in the USA and each book includes stories from as diverse a group of writers as possible. Chicken Soup for the Soul solicits and publishes stories from the LGBTQ community and from people of all ethnicities, nationalities, and religions.

In 1964, Edwin and Jean Armbruster left their home in the United States to raise their family on the Panama Canal Zone, a little known American territory in the Central American country of Panama. In Canal Zone Daughter, Judy (Armbruster) Haisten chronicles her unique childhood culminating to the crushing loss when former President Jimmy Carter signs treaties that effectively eliminates her -and fellow U.S. citizens' -former home. Charming, funny, and poignant, the author captures her remarkable American story in an exotic place and time. www.canalzonedaughter.com

One must handle the challenges of growing up with a sense of humor. Though living in paradise can be a dream, life is not without strife. There were no rich, no poor, and no unemployment in Brian Allen's Panama Canal Zone. Yet his home town was utterly destroyed and the dead exhumed. Brian tells his story with humor, warts and all. My Paradise Lost is about a boy growing to manhood in the golden age of the Canal Zone. It was an innocent, Huck Finn in the rain forest existence. His township of Coco Solo was a blue collar world of mangoes and maids, exotica and history. Misadventure abounds and teen romance is just as awkward in paradise as anywhere. There is parental conflict, life, death, and the ghost of Jim Crow racism. At the best time of his life, Brian is involved in a fatal car accident that puts him in the custody of the intimidating Guardia Nacional. His fate rests in the courts of a dictatorship whose El Supremo is bent on sovereignty over his Canal Zone home. You will feel the tropical sun, splash in the canal, ache for love, laugh at the familiar, and cry for the dead. Photos and popular recipes are included."I thought the wonderful days of growing up in the Zone were gone until I read My Paradise Lost. This Coco Solo girl was transported back to treasured days gone by. Brian beautifully captured the spirit of the Zone, mosquitoes and all. Thank you Brian for a personal peek at an evolving Paradise." --Betty LeDoux-Morris, four time past president of the Panama Canal Society. “You learn something when you read Brian Allen's work, about history, about the world, about yourself, in a voice that is as familiar and comfortable as your best friend's.” --Karen L. Barron, English Professor and award winning fiction and non-fiction writer. Reader: be prepared. This is a charming coming-of-age memoir set in the exotic location of the Panama Canal Zone, and filled with humor, adventure, and insight. But My Paradise Lost is also an examination of colonialism, justice, hardship and loss. Through his story, Allen reveals the development of his character. In doing so, he enlarges our sense of what it means to be both Americans and global citizens. --Thomas Averill, English Professor, W.U. Writer in Residence, O. Henry Award winning author.

This publication covers 150 historical photos (Then), in black and white, from 1904 to 1941 and include their original titles. The images recall the lifestyle of some villages and sites on the Pacific side of the Canal Zone such as Albrook, Ancon, Balboa, Balboa Heights, Clayton, Corozal, Diablo, Fort Amador, Gamboa, La Boca, Madden, Miraflores, Paraiso, Pedro Miguel and Summit. All current (Now) color photographs were taken this year (2016).

The construction, maintenance, and defense of the Panama Canal brought Panamanians, U.S. soldiers and civilians, West Indians, Asians, and Latin Americans into close, even intimate, contact. In this lively and provocative social history, Michael E. Donoghue positions the Panama Canal Zone as an imperial borderland where U.S. power, culture, and ideology were projected and contested. Highlighting race as both an overt and underlying force that shaped life in and beyond the Zone, Donoghue details how local traditions and colonial policies interacted and frequently clashed. Panamanians responded to U.S. occupation with proclamations, protests, and everyday forms of resistance and acquiescence. Although U.S. "Zonians" and military personnel stigmatized Panamanians as racial inferiors, they also sought them out for service labor, contraband, sexual pleasure, and marriage. The Canal Zone, he concludes, reproduced classic colonial hierarchies of race, national identity, and gender, establishing a model for other U.S. bases and imperial outposts around the globe.