The Singer's Needle is a bold and experimental book, a sort of academic version of Julio Cortázar's novel Rayuela (Hopscotch). It is commendable for a scholar to take risks; the profession benefits from such risks and should encourage them by accepting and welcoming them. That said, this book might be the most incisive history of twentieth-century Panama.
Ezer Vierba seeks to do two things. First, he examines the history of Panama through three significant events: the creation of Coiba, Panama's penitentiary island, which President Belisario Porras inaugurated in 1919; the assassination of President José Antonio Remón Cantera in 1955; and the assassination of liberation theology priest Héctor Gallego in 1971. Second, Vierba critiques the historical profession and its methods.
What do the three events that Vierba examines have in common, and what do they, together, tell us about the history of Panama? The author chooses to insinuate the...
