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The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
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 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.
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 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.
Editorial Reviews
The Washington Star David McCullough's history of this extraordinary construction job between the Atlantic and Pacific is everything history ought to be. It is dramatic, accurate...and altogether gripping.
The Washington Post Book World Solid, entertainingly written and fair-minded...McCullough unravels the complicated and sometimes deliberately obscured story that lies behind the Panama Canal.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt The New York Times A chunk of history full of giant-sized characters and rich in political skullduggery.
The New York Daily News In the hands of McCullough, the digging of the great ditch becomes a kind of peacetime epic...The book will absorb you...You won't want to put it down once you've started reading it.
Newsweek McCullough is a storyteller with the capacity to steer readers through political, financial, and engineering intricacies without fatigue or muddle. This is grand-scale, expert work.
The Washington Post Book World Solid, entertainingly written and fair-minded...McCullough unravels the complicated and sometimes deliberately obscured story that lies behind the Panama Canal.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt The New York Times A chunk of history full of giant-sized characters and rich in political skullduggery.
The New York Daily News In the hands of McCullough, the digging of the great ditch becomes a kind of peacetime epic...The book will absorb you...You won't want to put it down once you've started reading it.
Newsweek McCullough is a storyteller with the capacity to steer readers through political, financial, and engineering intricacies without fatigue or muddle. This is grand-scale, expert work.
Readers Top Reviews
VST. BurkardMike BDa
This book is a heady mix of contemporary history, geography, technology and mind blowing biography. The fact that the canal had such illustrious preceding history (Suez), spanning not just continents and competing foreign policy, but also similar gargantuan human endeavour, it becomes incumbent upon the author to walk the reader through a lot of Suez history as well. This affords the reader a very useful context, which helps is deeply appreciating the scale of the endeavour that was Panama Canal. One constantly finds oneself opening up the map, to be reminded of the geographical layout, which is key to the entire plot. This, in itself, is highly educational. For example - it may remind you that the thin sliver of land connecting the continents of North America and South America is home to so many countries. Where you might have previously gone, ‘ah - Mexico’ - you will now know that it has - Gautemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and, of course, the protagonists, Nicaragua and Panama. Should someone come from that Project Management background, or be interested in that field, this book is such a delight (for the things done well) and annoyance, all at the same time. For example, there can be no better illustration of outlandish optimism bias, than what was on display when the French mounted their audacious attempt to build the canal. Diseases (specially Yellow Fever) were one of the constant challenges faced by the project. The reader comes face to face with the reality of what Yellow Fever meant during those days. There were no other options, other than getting a grip on, and taming this ravaging malady, if the canal was ever to come to fruition. The approach of the medical fraternity, the painstaking analysis of the problem, leading to smart prevention approach, is something for which alone this book could be read, even if you don't care for the canal. To read this book, while living through the pandemic of COVID, made the whole experience alive and vivid. While reading the book, and learning about the challenges that were faced in various stages before and during the build - one cannot but admire the ingenious solutions that were devised by the smart people working on the project; while, at the same time thinking of how the modern technology would have made a short work of it. The author does a superb job of describing the personalities and the favourable (and detrimental) traits they brought on to the roles they played in the building of the canal. CONS I do think that the author, was not able to weed out a lot of material (which he could have done easily), in order to keep the story a tad more linear. Having said that, the reader is left in supreme awe of the scale of research that must have been carried out, in order to write this book.
Michael I.
For weeks David McCullough’s THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS sat on my shelf like a stone tablet. It frightened me. I worried I’d be slogging through a seven hundred page encyclopedia weighed down with engineering minutiae that no writer could redeem, even one as talented as Mr. McCullough. After finishing the book, I can announce that my suspicions were inaccurate. Very very inaccurate. This book is engaging and, dare I say, exciting. To understand the making of the Panama Canal, the actual mechanics of the excavation are secondary to the microscopic biology of mosquitoes or the avarice of men who strove for greatness. The Panama Canal’s saga stretches over decades and continents. It was a Great Work dreamed-up during a time when empires were at their zenith and the possibilities for human achievement felt limitless. The first half of the book focuses on the French, who, with characteristic élan, threw themselves into bridging the oceans. To accomplish this feat, they chartered a corporation under the guidance of Ferdinand de Lessep. McCullough chronicles the soar and crash of the company that foundered when ambitions met head-on with the diseases and logistics that waited in the jungle. The fallout was a national scandal that dwarfs Enron in its impact. The author gives a stirring depiction of the graft, greed, and lack of preparedness that doomed the project for the French. The book’s second half focuses on the American stewardship of the canal. Shadowy characters emerge with disparate motives and no deficit of cunning. These pages fly by with the speed of a political thriller, which it most certainly is. Coups are orchestrated, votes are traded, and influence is peddled. How the canal became the Panama Canal instead of the Nicaragua Canal is worthy of its own history. It’s a riveting chapter of American history, ably told by David McCullough. Like all of McCullough’s books, THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS is only nominally about an event. It’s about the people who spurred that event. The managers who oversaw the project were remarkable people who wrestled into submission one of mankind’s great achievements. The author creates nuanced portrayals of men like Goethals. You understand their backgrounds, their motivations, their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve read most of David McCullough’s books, and this is my favorite. To explore something as huge as the making of the Panama Canal is to explore not just a grand work of human engineering; it’s a descent into the best and worst of who we are. We ceaselessly labor to connect the world and be remembered, while simultaneously we darkly scheme for riches as we subject the weak for fleeting gain. How we reconcile the disparity in our inner nature is a question we’ll struggle with forever. In the meantime, we have David McCullough to shine a light on our defining eras, and keep the discus...
Shekar
They should definitely read this book -- as one sample. This is truly the authoritative information guide on Panama Canal. I have learned, researched, watched documentaries, even visited Panama Canal museum etc., this book covers it all. Mr. McCullough writes so crisply, it contains no extraneous information and leaves no important information. The story is unbelievable, and what one takes for granted on the Panama canal -- this book describes the detail which people have gone through to make it feel that is yet another natural thing. Very well researched and written book. If one is interested in history of trade, and the largest ever human engineering project undertaken, even as of this review, then this is it,. I wish I could give 6 stars, but Amazon allows only 5. Don't know how to make it stand out from the tiny little of what I have read.
Tom W
Excellent book!!! I just did a cruise and went through the Panama Canal THEN bought the book. Wished I had read it first, but still enjoying it tremendously. Oddly, in some ways I’m glad to read it after too, so either way is good. Now I’m really hoping I’ll get another.opportunity to go through the Canal again. A good amount of historical pictures included. Extremely detailed historically. About 617 pages of story and nearly 100 pages of notes and references. Before I went through the Canal, it wasn’t a huge draw for me. Thought I’d like the engineering side perhaps. Well, I did very much enjoy the engineering aspect of it, but the human interest/achievement turned out to be even more interesting. And I just want to say, in my opinion, Godin de Lepinay is really the unsung hero of the Panama Canal, the true genius behind the construction of the Canal. Unfortunately for de Lepinay, he overtly played a very very small, virtually unknown role in the building of the Canal. But in my going through the Canal the greatest engineering feature that struck me, was the one de Lepinay was the first to propose. It was very simple,but was a pure stroke of genius. I had no idea until I read the book who was the first to come up with the idea, but the book did mention it, and it was de Lepinay.
whitepass
It's David McCullough. If you don't know this author, here's a fine introduction. This reads like a novel as he sprinkles each page with amazing details of what it took to carve a path between the Atlantic and Pacific - saving months of treacherous journey sailing around the horn of South America to reach the west coast of the United States and points beyond. Prior to the canal, the "Path Between the Seas" was literally a winding, dangerous, path through the jungle. El Camino Real, "The King's Highway", carried untold wealth of silver and gold to Spain's ships and Europe from the mines of South America and Mexico, along with spices and goods from the Orient, in early global trade. The Panama Canal accelerated world-wide trade and allowed the United States to have a strategic naval advantage; being able to move fleets around the globe much faster. I like to read anything David McCullough writes and this is no exception.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Threshold
There is a charm of adventure about this new quest...
The New York Times
I
The letter, several pages in length and signed by Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, was addressed to Commander Thomas O. Selfridge. It was an eminently clear, altogether formal document, as expected, and had a certain majesty of tone that Commander Selfridge thought quite fitting. That he and the Secretary were personally acquainted, that they had in fact become pleasantly drunk together on one past occasion and vowed eternal friendship as their carriage rolled through the dark capital, were in no way implied. Nor is it important, except that Selfridge, a serious and sober man on the whole, was to wonder for the rest of his days what influence the evening may have had on the way things turned out for him.
His own planning and preparations had already occupied several extremely busy months. The letter was but the final official directive:
Navy Department
Washington, January 10, 1870
Sir: You are appointed to the command of an expedition to make a survey of the Isthmus of Darien, to ascertain the point at which to cut a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The steam-sloop Nipsic and the store-ship Guard will be under your Command...
The Department has entrusted to you a duty connected with the greatest enterprise of the present age; and upon your enterprise and your zeal will depend whether your name is honorably identified with one of the facts of the future...
No matter how many surveys have been made, or how accurate they may have been, the people of this country will never be satisfied until every point of the Isthmus is surveyed by some responsible authority, and by properly equipped parties, such as will be under your command, working on properly matured plans...
So on January 22, 1870, a clear, bright abnormally mild Saturday, the Nipsic cast off at Brooklyn Navy Yard and commenced solemnly down the East River. The Guard, under Commander Edward P. Lull, followed four days later.
In all, the expedition comprised nearly a hundred regular officers and men, two Navy doctors, five civilians from the Coast Survey (surveyors and draftsmen), two civilian geologists, three telegraphers from the Signal Corps, and a photographer, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, who had been Mathew Brady's assistant during the war.
Stowed below on the Guard was the finest array of modern instruments yet assembled for such an undertaking -- engineers' transits, spirit levels, gradienters, surveyors' compasses and chains, delicate pocket aneroid barometers, mercurial mountain barometers, current meters -- all "for prosecuting the work vigorously and scientifically." (The Stackpole transits, made by the New York firm of Stackpole & Sons, had their telescope axis mounted in double cone bearings, for example, which gave the instrument greater rigidity than older models, and the introduction of a simplified horizontal graduation reading allowed for faster readings and less chance of error.) There were rubber blankets and breech-loading rifles for every man, whiskey, quinine, an extra 600 pairs of shoes, and 100 miles of telegraph wire. Stores "in such shape as to be little liable to injury by exposure to rains" were sufficient for four months: 7,000 pounds of bacon, 10,000 pounds of bread, 6,000 pounds of tomato soup, 30 gallons of beans, 2,500 pounds of coffee, 100 bottles of pepper, 600 pounds of canned butter.
The destination was the Darien wilderness on the Isthmus of Panama, more than two thousand miles from Brooklyn, within ten degrees of the equator, and, contrary to the mental picture most people had, east of the 80th meridian -- that is, east of Florida. They would land at Caledonia Bay, about 150 miles east of the Panama Railroad. It was the same point from which Balboa had begun his crossing in 1513, and where, at the end of the seventeenth century, William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, had established the disastrous Scottish colony of New Edinburgh, because Caledonia Bay (as he named it) was to be the future "door of the seas." Harassed by the Spanish, decimated by disease, the little settlement had lasted scarcely more than a year. Every trace of it had long since vanished.
Darien was known to be the narrowest point anywhere on the Central American isthmus, by which was meant the...
Threshold
There is a charm of adventure about this new quest...
The New York Times
I
The letter, several pages in length and signed by Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, was addressed to Commander Thomas O. Selfridge. It was an eminently clear, altogether formal document, as expected, and had a certain majesty of tone that Commander Selfridge thought quite fitting. That he and the Secretary were personally acquainted, that they had in fact become pleasantly drunk together on one past occasion and vowed eternal friendship as their carriage rolled through the dark capital, were in no way implied. Nor is it important, except that Selfridge, a serious and sober man on the whole, was to wonder for the rest of his days what influence the evening may have had on the way things turned out for him.
His own planning and preparations had already occupied several extremely busy months. The letter was but the final official directive:
Navy Department
Washington, January 10, 1870
Sir: You are appointed to the command of an expedition to make a survey of the Isthmus of Darien, to ascertain the point at which to cut a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The steam-sloop Nipsic and the store-ship Guard will be under your Command...
The Department has entrusted to you a duty connected with the greatest enterprise of the present age; and upon your enterprise and your zeal will depend whether your name is honorably identified with one of the facts of the future...
No matter how many surveys have been made, or how accurate they may have been, the people of this country will never be satisfied until every point of the Isthmus is surveyed by some responsible authority, and by properly equipped parties, such as will be under your command, working on properly matured plans...
So on January 22, 1870, a clear, bright abnormally mild Saturday, the Nipsic cast off at Brooklyn Navy Yard and commenced solemnly down the East River. The Guard, under Commander Edward P. Lull, followed four days later.
In all, the expedition comprised nearly a hundred regular officers and men, two Navy doctors, five civilians from the Coast Survey (surveyors and draftsmen), two civilian geologists, three telegraphers from the Signal Corps, and a photographer, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, who had been Mathew Brady's assistant during the war.
Stowed below on the Guard was the finest array of modern instruments yet assembled for such an undertaking -- engineers' transits, spirit levels, gradienters, surveyors' compasses and chains, delicate pocket aneroid barometers, mercurial mountain barometers, current meters -- all "for prosecuting the work vigorously and scientifically." (The Stackpole transits, made by the New York firm of Stackpole & Sons, had their telescope axis mounted in double cone bearings, for example, which gave the instrument greater rigidity than older models, and the introduction of a simplified horizontal graduation reading allowed for faster readings and less chance of error.) There were rubber blankets and breech-loading rifles for every man, whiskey, quinine, an extra 600 pairs of shoes, and 100 miles of telegraph wire. Stores "in such shape as to be little liable to injury by exposure to rains" were sufficient for four months: 7,000 pounds of bacon, 10,000 pounds of bread, 6,000 pounds of tomato soup, 30 gallons of beans, 2,500 pounds of coffee, 100 bottles of pepper, 600 pounds of canned butter.
The destination was the Darien wilderness on the Isthmus of Panama, more than two thousand miles from Brooklyn, within ten degrees of the equator, and, contrary to the mental picture most people had, east of the 80th meridian -- that is, east of Florida. They would land at Caledonia Bay, about 150 miles east of the Panama Railroad. It was the same point from which Balboa had begun his crossing in 1513, and where, at the end of the seventeenth century, William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, had established the disastrous Scottish colony of New Edinburgh, because Caledonia Bay (as he named it) was to be the future "door of the seas." Harassed by the Spanish, decimated by disease, the little settlement had lasted scarcely more than a year. Every trace of it had long since vanished.
Darien was known to be the narrowest point anywhere on the Central American isthmus, by which was meant the...
