Wonderful! 617 pages of fascinating Panama Canal history -- what a treat to read and learn so much!
I know the David McCullough style of writing isn't for everyone, but I'm enjoying it. The books are thick with facts and information.

The canal started as a French project. I didn't know that until I read this book. The book is divided into three major sections and the first section was devoted entirely to the French effort to build the canal through Panama.

Eventually the French company went broke and sold the project to the USA. All the intrigues and negotiations of this transaction were discussed and examined in the second section of the book.

The third section of the book was about the American canal building experience. In this book all the technical building information was saved for the last chapter.

Well, I've now been educated. I had this reading experience planned last year and was surprised when President Trump mentioned the canal ownership issue. What a great time to learn the history involved!

One of the most interesting sections of the book, for me, was in learning what Dr. Gorgas did to eliminate or lessen the problems of yellow fever and malaria during the American building project. The French did not take care of the health issues and consequently about 20,000 people - mostly black laborers from Jamaica - died from these diseases. When the USA took over Dr. Gorgas was able to improve the environment so Panama became a safer place to live. Still, over 5600 people died during that time -- and again, it was mostly black laborers from Caribbean islands.

I'm very happy I read this book... it was a great learning experience.

This was a very interesting and informative book on the dream of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with the Panama Canal. The book starts with the involvement of the famous French designer and construction manager of the Suez Canal and France's eventual failure, and finishes with the US completing the job. It contains all the engineering difficulties, political intrgue, medical discoveries, labor relations management , and construction management challenges you could ask for. With the completion of the canal, Teddy Roosevelt's dream of the US becoming a world naval power could become a reality.

The reputation of McCullough's history of the Panama canal is well deserved. Detailed and exhaustive, but thoroughly engaging. An interesting read for an understanding of the immensity of the accomplishment that the Panama Canal represents, but a must read prior to visiting the canal.

Inspiring and mind-boggling.

An interesting, detailed account of how the Panama Canal came into being. A private French company headed by Ferdinand de Lesseps decided on the canal being built in Panama rather than Nicaragua in 1881. De Lesseps was a former diplomat who developed the Suez Canal. The project was hampered by poor planning, engineering problems and tropical diseases that killed thousands of labourers. The French company’s canal enterprise collapsed in the 1890s.

In the 1902 the American government authorized the purchase of the French company’s Panama Canal assets. Then President Theodore Roosevelt recognised Panama as a Republic, declaring independence from Colombia. One of the first priorities of the Americans was eradicating yellow fever and malaria. They did this by covering all still water with a variety of covers, (such as mosquito netting), and providing running water. This proved to be very effective. By 1914 the Panama Canal had been completed. It was a major engineering feat with many setbacks, (like land slides), over the 12 years.

This book is recommended for readers interested in the detail behind the building of the Panama Canal.

I found the book to be an interesting, engaging read.

This book was first published in 1977.

David McCullough is a safe bet for popular history. He writes well, ambling along from the main thread of his story--here, the building of the Panama Canal--to include illuminating historical background and biographies of the principals.

The story of the canal is at once impressive, from the engineering standpoint, and depressing, as one of the many sordid chapters of US imperialism. McCullough details how we "engineered" the creation of a puppet Panamanian state along with a canal in his account.

The hardship to build the canal should overwhelm all of us. McCullough is a great historian and historical writer.

I found this book lurking in my Kindle library (we have a family sharing library, and I have literate children). I decided to read it simply because it was written by David McCullough. I have read several books by this author who is probably the greatest living American historian. No matter how familiar I think I am with a subject, McCullough fills in blanks I didn't know existed in the most intelligent, complete, and readable way.

I was fascinated by the French experience in its attempt at building the canal, and I am grateful he provided the thorough back story, crucial to the understanding the approach Americans finally took in solving the monumental problems of building a Path Between the Seas.

It is an interesting time to read it, too. It details a time when America was eager, willing, and able to look outward and offer, with great confidence, our answer to a problem whose solution would benefit the world, motivated largely by the fact that it WOULD benefit the world. It was a time when we had the vision, the talent, the will, and the moral authority to operate on this kind of scale.

I certainly would have given it 5 stars, but I felt it ended a bit abruptly. I don't agree that he had labored TOO much on the French experience. If anything, he could have given the American aspects of the funding, the congressional debates, etc. a little more detail.

And I know this is a Kindle thing, but I kind of lose track of where I am in the book, and suddenly it is ended. It's not like I can feel the thickness of the remaining pages shrinking in my hands as I read.

Another great contribution by David McCullough!

(Audible) Disappointingly not read by the author.

I had a vague understanding of the history of the Panama Canal prior to listening to this book on Audible during commutes.

The book provides a well organized narrative of information beginning with the French effort to build the canal and then the United States' take over and completion of the project.

The volume of records relating to this project must have been similar to the amount of earth that needed to be moved to form the Culebra Cut: official communications, diaries, receipts, congressional records, newspapers and magazines. Turning that into an easy to follow narrative could not have been an easy task--but McCullough did it. Again. He's really good at his craft.

There were several things that struck me about this piece of history:
--The importance of charisma in a visionary leader to inspire financial support and physical effort. Charisma that wades into the land of conmen.
--The changing political climate that began with an expectation that a little graft, a little bribery was necessary in order to do business at all; then the extreme strict bureaucracy that created delays because of the volume of oversight; then the streamlining of bureaucracy to a military precision model.
--The importance of physical health, sanitation, insect and critter control; without it there wouldn't be a canal.
--The arrogance of white supremacy both in how workers were treated, access to housing, access to sanitation; as well as pay, education and recognition. (It makes your stomach turn to read how the Panamanians, the Columbians, the "silver pay" workers were treated and disregarded as too unintelligent to make decisions for themselves. Especially when it was getting in the way of white man's goals.)
--Sort of related to charisma, but the importance of WHY you're doing something to the motivation and effort to do the impossible. If you only focused on the WHAT--the Canal and the HOW--with increasingly more efficient machines and systems--you still wouldn't have build the canal. The workers, the engineers, Congress, the American Public--needed to buy into the WHY in order to dedicate the largest financial and physical effort outside of a war in our nation's history.

There's wonder in the size of the project. Wonder in the obstacles, the rain, the Chagres river, the land slides, the earthquakes, the fractured earth slides, the voracious appetite of the rain forest. When McCullough lists the numerous ways that newspaper reporters tried to convey the SIZE of the project it is still overwhelming. Mankind was trying to move a mountain with teaspoons. And they did it.

Amazing that it was completed. Amazing that is still stands.

Whether you're a history buff, a geography buff, a student of military history (supply lines and organization), a political scientist or arm chair sociologist--this book is a fascinating read.

A treasure.

(But fair warning--there are a LOT of dates and a LOT of numbers, prices, size, distances--lots and lots of numbers.)

I guess I have always known just enough about the Panama Canal to be dangerous, just enough to always be intrigued by it. When I mentioned to book friends that I was reading this book I was usually met with a "what in heaven's name for?" look...the Canal apparently doesn't hold much allure to a lot of folks these days. But it does for me and this book more than scratched that itch for me. Typical, excellent McCullough, easy and enjoyable to read, an excellent history of how the Canal came to be. It is a salute to engineers and public health pioneers who solved problem after problem after problem. The Canal should never be taken for granted and will always be relevant.

When I read a book about a place I always ask myself if I now want to go there. If I do, I feel like the author has successfully reeled me in...so how do I feel about the Panama Canal after reading this book? Let's just say that someday I hope to take a cruise that features a full daylight transit of the Canal, none of that wimpy, poke-your-nose-in to Lake Gatun and then turn around and go back stuff. I have been reeled in.

Highly recommended.

McCullough book about the Panama Canal shows the hubris of De Lesspes who was the brilliant builder of the Suez Canal through sand but failed miserably in Panama as he had never even been to Panama and thought you could build a canal in a jungle.
The hardships endured by the people who did finally build the can were unbelievable with malaria, rock slides and oppressive heat.

This was *such* a long book. I appreciated McCullough offering the entire span of the canal's construction, which required him to first start with the French endeavor, the eventual fallout, the political kangaroo courts dealing with the supposed corruption of the construction, and the endless plagues of disease and death that haunted all involved in the endeavor. Then McCullough had to move over to the American stage, where three presidents and their relative Congresses had to first agree to the purchase of the land; deal with civil unrest in the country; reach an alliance with Panama; find the appropriate leader to oversee the project (which took several tries); deal with the yellow fever, pneumonia, malaria, and a handful of other tropical diseases by essentially eradicating mosquitoes from the country; and then continue laboring against weather and geography to finally create the first electric lock-system for a seawater-level canal. It was a slog every step of the way and it kind of felt that way as I read it. Perhaps some of the politics and infighting could have been abbreviated or perhaps it already was (I shudder to think how much more was left out), but I believe I have now earned a thorough education on the construction of one of mankind's--and especially America's--greatest engineering feats.