I read this book while I was on a cruise from Houston to Seattle on the NCL Jewel, so I got to see the Big Ditch up close and in live-living-color...awesome experience! It was amazing that I went through the same locks that have been in operation since 1914 and the same locks that my Dad passed through on the Battleship Iowa during WWII from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. The book tells the story of the men and women who fought against overwhelming odds to construct a passageway between the oceans from the time the French began the project to when the Americans finished it. It is a story of engineering achievements, medical triumph, political power plays, a few successes, and a lot of failures. After reading this book you will be astonished that the canal was completed. The Americans almost made the same tragic mistakes as the French, but a few fortunate events turned the tide. A tiny blood sucking insect almost doomed the project with the unbelievable number of deaths it caused from yellow fever and malaria. A disturbing underling story was about the horrible treatment of black workers. Even though slavery had been abolished, racism and Jim Crow were alive and well. It was interesting that most black workers came from Jamaica. Southerners did not want to lose their pool of cheap labor, so they blocked efforts to recruit black canal workers from the land of the free. History buffs will love this book, but McCullough weaves a captivating tale that any reader will find intriguing. I give this book my highest recommendation and also recommend that you put a trip through the Panama Canal on your bucket list.

While I did not enjoy this one q-u-i-t-e as much as David McCullough's TRUMAN, I still enjoyed it very much. A glorious book about one of the most difficult jobs this country has ever undertaken -- building the "trans-Isthmus" canal in the early Twentieth Century. See how the French company that had built the Suez Canal was a shoe-in for this one but just wasn't up to the task -- and how American muscle (Bucyrus steam-shovels, for example), planning and problem-solving (particularly in the matter of Yellow Fever) finally got the job done. The kind of book that is utterly factual, yet makes you proud to be an American. David McCullough includes the background of domestic politics President Theodore Roosevelt had to struggle against to get the Canal funded (U.S. trunk railroads were opposed to the project, for instance). The author really knows how to tell a story compellingly yet with utter factuality. Highly recommended no matter what part of the globe you're from.

CONSUMMATELY BORING. (AND YET…)

“The United States had a mandate from civilization to build the canal, he [Theodore Roosevelt] told Congress on January 4, 1904…”—page 387

Reading very much like an eighth-grade textbook— pedantically packed with a densely detailed, confusing, and virtually meaningless litany of facts, figures, names and dates—especially the first two-thirds of David McCullough’s behemoth, THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 presents a serious challenge to slogging on.

It’s not until page 411, Book Three, The Builders 1904-1914, that the story begins to get really interesting; when, with rough-riding Teddy R. leading the charge, the Americans sashay to the rescue. And then it becomes an engaging tale of the epic struggle of man, mind, might, and machine against nature, climate, topography and disease. We know who the eventual winners were.

Recommendation: (1) Forget everything I’ve written here; (2) remember that this is David McCullough we’re talking about; and (3) read some of the many five-star goodreads.com reviews on which to base your ‘to read’ or ‘not to read’ choice.

“The creation of a water passage across Panama was one of the supreme human achievements of all time, the culmination of a heroic dream of four hundred years and of more than twenty years of phenomenal effort and sacrifice.”—page 619

NOOKbook edition, 731 pages (624 pages, before Acknowledgments and Notes)

1. How well written is it?

I listened to this book on Audible.

All of David McCullough's books are well written and easily digestible. That being said, you can tell that this is an older book. Some of the transitions were not as smooth as his other books and I felt that there were sections that he would have condensed if it were written today.

2. How interesting is the subject?

The Panama Canal is one of those subjects that is kind of esoteric. It is something that is out there, probably has an interesting story, but nobody would actually write a history book on the subject, right?

3. Does the book offer novel insight into the subject or is it just regurgitating already known facts?

The book tells the story of the Panama Canal. The first 20% discusses the origins and ideas of the Canal. In this section you learn about the early debates that occurred during the 19th century as engineers and politicians discussed the idea of a canal. For centuries, explorers (such as Lewis and Clark) sought a waterway passage between the Atlantic and Pacific. When it became apparent that a natural passage way did not exist, engineers and politicians contemplated the idea of building a manmade passage somewhere in Central America. The question became, “Where?” Most initially were considering Nicaragua with Panama being the second option.

After the completion of the Suez Canal, those discussions intensified until 1879 when Ferdinand de Lesseps (the person responsible for the Suez Canal) became the president of the Panama Canal Company and started work on the Panama Canal. The book goes into a lot (too much?) detail on the French attempts to dig a Canal, its ultimate failure, and backlash in France.

The last quarter of the book felt a little rushed as it covered the acquisition of the failed French attempts, the US overcoming the obstacles that doomed the French, and legacy of the Canal.

While the sections of the book could have been improved, overall it was a very enjoyable book. McCullough did a good job at making the history of the Panama Canal interesting.