Book Reviews for your consideration
The Path Between the Seas
David McCullough
Author David McCullough is an author with a well deserved reputation for taking meticulous and indepth research and applying it to an historical subject and relating it with the style of a master story teller. McCullough makes his subject come alive. That was certainly the case with his Pulizer Price winning book The Path Between the Seas. McCullough's work is the tale of the construction of the Panama Canal which seperates North and South America so that shipping can pass between the two continents.
Path Between the Seas chronicles the origin of the Panama Canal adventure in France. In 1870, the French goverment underwrote the Panama Canal Company, hiring famous engineer Ferdinand De Lessups. De Lessups was the world famous manager of the project that constructed a canal that connected the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. De Lessups seemed a natural choice. Between De Lessup's previous success and faith in nineteeth century engineering technology, construction on the canal began with much fanfare.
While engineering technology may have been impressive by the standards of the day, the Panamanian terrian proved far more formidable than originally anticipated. Tropical diseases ravaged the construction crews, indiscriminately killing thousands upon thousands. In the end, misquito bourn Yellow Fever, dysentary, malaria and pneumonia, along with massive cost over runs proved to be devastating. The French efforts to build a canal across the Panamanian Ithmus collapsed.
Enter the United States and President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1901, Teddy Roosevelt had just become president in the aftermath of William McKinley's assassination. Roosevelt would be considered a fervant imperialist by history and the idea of a canal across Panama, as a means of projecting American power, was intriguing to him. Factually speaking, a canal built and controlled by Germany, Russia or Great Britian would have been problematic for America.
McCullough describes in detail the complex political maneuvering that eventually led to America's successful building of the Panama Canal. He also catalogs the triumphs accomplished by American engineers and doctors. For example, American physician Dr. William Gorgas discovered a link between Yellow Fever and the mosquito. That discovery led to vastly reduced incidences of that disease and malaria essentially irradicting dibilitating epidemics. George Goethals and John Stevens were the engineers. Stevens set up the administrative and organizational systems that insured success and Geothals with his tremendous engineering expertise and military discipline saw the project through to success in 1914. The American effort spanned the administrations of three US presidents; Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson and in telling the tale of Path Between the Seas, McCullough doesn't go off on any flights of historical interpretation or revisionism.
The Path Between the Seas was more than just the story of how the Panama Canal was built; it's a well researched, historically accurate, lively, and highly entertaining story that takes out a slice of the late nineteeth and early twentieth century America that says a lot about the exceptionalism of this nation that we've inherited. It is very much worth your time.
Blessings,
Pastor Jeff