The National Book Award-winning epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal, a first-rate drama of the bold and brilliant engineering feat that was filled with both tragedy and triumph, told by master historian David McCullough. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Truman, here is the national bestselling epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal. In The Path Between the … Path Between the Seas, acclaimed historian David McCullough delivers a first-rate drama of the sweeping human undertaking that led to the creation of this grand enterprise.
The Path Between the Seas tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. Applying his remarkable gift for writing lucid, lively exposition, McCullough weaves the many strands of the momentous event into a comprehensive and captivating tale.
Winner of the National Book Award for history, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, and the Cornelius Ryan Award (for the best book of the year on international affairs), The Path Between the Seas is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, the history of technology, international intrigue, and human drama.more
Historically very informative, some superfluous and lengthy information.
I read the book during a transit of the Panama Canal. I recommend book and transit!
might be my favorite books by David Mccullogh. You feel like you are reading a great fictional novel.
I read this enroute to the canal on a cruise, and finished prior to getting there. It made the transit that much more meaningful.
Fabulous look into the building of the Panama Canal
A good book to read while cruising through the Panama Canal
Several years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the Panama Canal, and was struck then by the remarkable feat that it was. And I didn’t even know the half of it. The Path Between the Seas has filled every gap in my knowledge and more. At some 600 pages, it is a veritable tome, and David McCullough has clearly done an almost-unfathomable amount of research – on the Suez Canal, the history of Panama, early engineering and railroading technologies and techniques and American imperialism (add Panama to the list of places Teddy Roosevelt took by storm), to name a few of the areas he visits in great, but highly readable detail. (I enjoyed this book more, and found it more readable than The Greater Journey, which I read last year.)
McCullough does a fine job tracing the canal from its beginnings as a French canal in the 1870s through its completion by the United States in 1914. In the process, some 25,000 men lost their lives and some $639 million – in 1914 dollars – were expended. Yet even the statistics – the cost, the amount of earth moved, the number of men employed (and killed), the gallons of water that pour through the locks – fail to convey the magnitude of the project that Ferdinand de Lesseps and John Stevens and George Goethals undertook and that Goethals saw through to completion.
I was amazed to learn the history behind the building of rhe Panama Canal. I alway thought “we built it”, andwas annoyed that Carter gave it away. We visited Panama in the early 80’s, and the American workers there were convinced Panama could not manage the Canal. Yup: it is now run by China.
But I had no idea that it was France, and a few determined Frenchmen, the spearheaded the idea of rhe canal, and fought for it for decades. Nor did I know of the horrific dearh toll due to the jungle coditions and the diseases (yellow fever and malaria were the primary, but not the only, rampant diseases).
Eventually, the failure of Fench canal companies led to Teddy Roosevelt stepping in, and the guarantee
A historical account of a giagantic undertaking that ended better than could be expected.
If you are going to sail through the canal, read this first.
Gives details into what happened in the history of the building of the Panama Canal and the events and details that brought the USA into the building and completion of the canal.
As with all McCullough’s books, very detailed account of this historical period and an examination of the building of the canal from so many different directions. Highly recommend.
Read “Path” some years ago. i have recommended it to many. fascinating, detailed story.
Not often that history is such a page Turner. Loved this book