De Lesseps then went on to meet with delegates from around the world about building a canal across Nicaragua. Reports of how expensive the Panama Railroad was were inaccurate, so he dismissed those concerns. The Panama Railroad had been a costly project, but de Lesseps didn’t think that would be an issue with this new venture because it was going to cost less than the railroad did. He wanted to continue being successful and in 1870, he decided to build another canal.

There are three main parts: a thesis that states there’s a difference between having an idea and actually implementing it the canal itself was contemplated by many people before being constructed and details on what happened during its construction, including political issues like changing ownership in America.įerdinand de Lesseps was known for completing the Suez Canal. It covers all aspects of its history, including why it was built and how it came to be. The book is about the construction of the Panama Canal. In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize winner, he has written many other nonfiction books that have been successful as well. It details how the canal was built and all of its problems along the way. In 1977, David McCullough published The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914. 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.1-Page Summary of The Path Between the Seas Overall Summary Applying his remarkable gift for writing lucid, lively exposition, McCullough weaves the many strands of the momentous event into a comprehensive and captivating tale. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. 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. 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 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.įrom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Truman, here is the national bestselling epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal.

A path between the seas