Rating: 
Summary: A well done story of a great American accomplishment
Review: Having lived in Panama, along the Canal, and having read this book both before and while living down there I can say that the author did a splendid job. Most Americans today only vaguely realize that we "dug a canal" in Panama years ago. The full story is fascinating history. McCullough weaves a detailed yet very readable story of political will, international intrigue, national pride, and engineering excellence to show that the creation of the canal was one of the crowning American achievements of the 20th century - the "moon shot" of it's day! Wonderful!
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Summary: Brilliant author, most exciting history book I know of.
Review: I certainly did not expect too much excitement from a 700 pages book about the Panama Canal, but David McCullough did an excellent job. He obviously did a lot of research, but his true accomplishment is putting all the little fragments together to one exciting story. This is not just history, it is politics, business, engineering, medicine, etc. And best of all, it is very well written and easy to read.
I like it even better than "Truman", McCulloughs most famous book.
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Summary: A brilliant history of the Panama Canal
Review: "The Path Between the Seas" is narrative history at its best - the story of perhaps the greatest engineering feat of modern times. Writing in the clear and lucid style for which he is noted, historian David McCullough traces the creation of the Panama Canal from its earliest inception by the French in 1870, to its completion 44 years later by the United States.McCullough skillfully weaves personalities and events together to create a powerful narrative replete with political intrigue, financial scandal, and triumph over tremendous adversity. The author first acquaints the reader with the leaders of the French attempt to build the canal - Ferdinand de Lesseps and his son, Charles, and Phillippe Bunau-Varilla, among others - and tells of the ultimate failure of their venture, and their disgrace due to financial scandal. McCullough then chronicles the ultimately successful American attempt to build the canal. Here is seen the political intrigue (the U.S. backed Panamanian revolution against Colombia, with the complicity of President Theodore Roosevelt, Secretary of State John Hay, and Bunau-Varilla); the successful war against yellow fever and malaria, led by American doctor William Gorgas; and the organizational and engineering genius of two American Chief Engineers - John Stevens and Colonel George Goethals - which led to the completion of the canal in 1914. "The Path Between the Seas" is more than just the story of how the Panama Canal was built; it is a well researched, historically accurate, and at the same time lively and highly entertaining account of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Covers the key players
Review: After our vacation to the Galapagos this past Spring I mentioned it would be neat to take the next trip along the coast of Costa Rica and Panama with a trip through the canal. My girlfriend bought me the book so that we could go sooner rather than later. It's tough reading a book about a canal. McCullough has built a reputation on writing giant books about fairly small subjects (Truman). He does a lot of research, then pieces it all together and inserts at least a little creativity (you get lines like "in this picture you can tell that he commands the entire room while his companion looks weary and beaten down"). Sometimes that gets annoying but for the most part I guess it keeps things moving along. This isn't so much a book of construction and achievement as it is of political intrigue (I'm an engineer and would have liked more of the construction and achievement). With today's Worldcom and Enron failures it is interesting to read a story about the (privately financed) French effort to build a canal that caused all of its stockholders (one of the most widely owned stocks of its day) to lose everything and its bondholders to get back 10 cents on the dollar. All the while the man running things was saying how great things were and hiding the truth that what he was trying to do was nearly impossible (he wanted a canal built at sea level). The failed French effort is nearly half the book. The rest is about the successful american effort, but even that is mostly about all the political manuevering and influence peddling that caused the canal to be picked up again. After that you get a portrayal of the leading people who were responsible for construction of the canal. Anyway, if any of that sound interesting, you might give the book a try. It was written in 1977 as Jimmy Carter was giving the canal back to Panama, but I don't know if there's much to tell or much more that has come to light since. It's a very heavy read, but if you have an interest in the subject it is pretty rewarding.
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Summary: An incredible feat!
Review: 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.
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Summary: What a feat!
Review: The book and the canal! My uncle was an avid reader of history. He has probably read more than 500 books on nearly every subject. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer a year ago and I had the good fortune of spending some time together in his final days. I asked him what his favorite book was. He was hesitant to single out one but said if he had to pick one it would be this. Shortly after his passing I bought the book and have to say I couldn't put it down. Granted I'm an engineer and appreciate the magnitude of the task put I was even more amazed by the politics of the time and how a project of this size was undertaken more than 100 years ago in a land that most people knew nothing of. Most of you have probably heard about the Big Dig in Boston which is $10B over budget, still not done and doesn't have any of the challenges that are presented in the book. I'm sure that most of us still have no real appreciation for the Canal today. If only our history classes taught such things.
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Summary: Classic McCullough - Tells a story, captures an age.
Review: David McCullough is a master of picking a great historical story and telling it an engaging, page-turning manner. In the process, he wraps in the surrounding personalities and sub-plots that define the age in which the story takes place.
In reading "Path Between the Seas" you get the sense of how different life was when travelling from New York to California was a three month affair which could be cut to six weeks by risking disease and death by cutting across the isthmus of Panama. The engineering feat undertaken to change that situation was the largest undertaken in the history of man. Anyone who enjoys history and/or engineering will find this one to be fascinating.
A great story, well-told. Highly recommended.
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Summary: excellent book
Review: This is a wonderfully interesting story. I can't believe all the "light weights" who felt the book was a "hard" read or "not bad"....whatever!
First off...anytime I intend to read a long, or in-depth work, I always stick to my mantra no matter what: "a chapter a day keeps the doctor away" - whether it takes 30 minutes or two hours. You can polish off War and Peace easily and not be overwhelmed - AND actually remember everyone's names and comprehend/enjoy the book, whatever it is. To each his own though...
Having said that, it's a great story - period. The reason virtually half the book is dedicated to unraveling the characters of the French effort is...uh...because they started it! Having read it, I greatly appreciated the insight into that (and the fascinating characters/controversy) which, until reading it, I had always sorta thought was, "o.k., the French started it but then we did everything!!! yeaaa!".
It's just not how the events unfolded.
What a silly assessment to suggest there was too much French coverage. That would be like becoming impatient that a World War One book discussed too many events in European countries before mentioning the efforts of the U.S. to assert itself!
Finally, I'm especially captivated by the very peculiar relationship the U.S. has had with the French, since even the revolutionary war times. If you read Frederick Douglas's excellent bio. George Washington, you will get more taste of this bizarre love, hate, respect, detest, admire, and mutual help that we always give each other over the years. To me it's quite interesting to observe. Even now, if WWIII broke out today, it probably wouldn't be long 'fore we would be helping each other like true brothers, only to go back pontificating how completely wacked out of our gords we both are.
I think the French connection was clearly the MOST fascinating thread throughout the book. After all, THEY built the Suez canal FIRST and...uh, screwed it all up on the Panama Canal...and we determined to build/complete it in my estimation on sheer ego alone (That's my boy Teddy!). You can't get soap operas like this on daytime! Truth IS stranger than fiction....
Great book.
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Summary: Fascinating tale - as only McCullough could tell it
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, not great
Review: The book was interesting at times, but also very labor intensive. I usually read books in about a week to ten days. This one took me 6 weeks. It just gets bogged down time and time again in facts and stories that didn't have a lot of relevancy.
The writing and research is excellent, but I think if you could have chopped 150-200 pages out of the book you would have been left with the same wealth of information in a more succinct format. I loved the descriptions of both the Americans and the French influence in the Canal, but the more than 150 pages that was spent talking about the legistlative and congressional hurdles that had to be crossed in order for the Americans to take over was just too much.
I didn't really care about all the facts and tidbits about the transition and at times got really confused because it is just so detailed that I lost interest.
I did really enjoy the chapters on medical achievements related to the Canal building. Really, the last 200 pages was very good. I would recommend it, but only to those that can slog through the minutia in the middle Feel free to skip through a few chapters when it gets bogged down. You won't miss much.
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