Appearance
The path between the seas : the creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
David McCullough has a tremendous talent for making epic stories come to life - the building of a canal, in this case. Everyone "knows" that the United States Army Corps of Engineers built the canal - or did they?McCullough dispels this rumor quite handily - yes, Army men were involved, but they were not acting as members of the army at the time the canal was built; they were acting as civilians.The Path Between the Seas starts with the French involvement (as the title suggests, the book starts 44 years before the canal opened for public use) in the building. For many years, the French toiled and struggled to build a sea-level canal in Panama while the USA simply considered Nicaragua to be a better alternative. McCullough describes the French achievements in great detail, and shows why the French failures were so monumental. After the French decided to abandon the project, the United States purchased the assets of the French company and started the American effort to construct the canal. In my opinion, this is the most exciting part of the book - the transition to the Americans, and the work that was accomplished in such a short period of time.In this abridged version, I believe that too much attention is focused on the French effort (about 70% of the disc time was devoted to the French work and failures). If the presentation was more balanced, this abridgement would be very exciting indeed. This is not the fault of McCullough - undoubtedly the full version of the book is outstanding, as are all of his works, but the abridgment just didn't quite do it for me.
The path between the seas : the creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
This book was a pleasure to read! Building the Panama Canal today would be a monumental undertaking, even with all of our modern technology. Building it almost a century ago was truly an incredible triumph, not only of engineering, but of political will and human spirit! McCullough weaves all these aspects together in this wonderful history. The story of the first French efforts to build the canal and how America came to acquire the land and pick up the failed French effort is a fascinating tale. This story is interwoven with the story of the perseverance of the men who actually built the canal through dense, blisteringly hot jungle, overcoming weather, terrain, and the everpresent fear of tropical diseases.
The path between the seas : the creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
The Path Between the Seas explains just about everything one could ever possibly want to know about the Panama Canal. You start off by reading about why the canal was needed and learn about the pioneers of the building of the canal. You then read about the French Era which is filled with scandal, lies, and a start to the canal. Then you read about the American Era. The America era is alot more interesting than the French. The American era starts with "TR" becoming president. The Americans start a Revolution in Panama fight off the misquitos and successfully build a canal in Panama.Thourghout the book you learn about the backround of the men who built the canal and about the life and times not just in Panama but in France and the United States. This is a must read by the award winning David McCullough that anyone interested in engineering, history or just learning new things should read.
The path between the seas : the creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
What a tale of adventure, intrigue and danger. Engrossing in not just the global implications of actually building the canal and what it meant for the world but the fate of all who were connected to it. The story includes the French connection, the fight against Malaria and medical breakthroughs, scores of deaths from sickness, injury and mudslides, political and financial scandals and a true engineering marvel. David McCullough has done it again. Along with The Great Bridge, this is one of his best works.
The path between the seas : the creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
This is a great book for folks who love the history of technology or politics.But whoever converted this to Kindle format did a lousy job! On the Kindle, typos occur on nearly every page, formatting of quotations is weird, notes appear in-line at the end of each chapter, and captions for images appear on pages by themselves instead of on the page with the matching image (which appears with no caption at all).It seems like the most likely explanation for the problems is a combination of the fact that this book was authored in the pre-digital age, and then apparently nobody proofread it after it was converted.
The path between the seas : the creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
David McCullough is always a fine historian and this is a very interesting book. I certainly recommend it. However...I have the Kindle edition. This is like an unedited first proof -- paragraphs and sentences out of order. Misspellings. The publisher should be ashamed to put such an atrocious mess onto the Kindle site.