Two years ago an American Commission was set up to report to President Johnson on the possibility of cutting a new Panama Canal by means of nuclear explosives. Five routes were considered: two in Panama, one each in Mexico, Nicaragua, and Colombia. The final decision will involve not just politics and economics but the social problems of the peoples who live in that area and have done for centuries. The Golden Isthmus tells the story of 450 years of man's efforts to bridge the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in this narrow neck of land, and of the native peoples who have had to suffer them.