Path Between Seas: Creation of Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David McCullough
	List Price:   $27.00 Unit Price:   $21.60 You Save:   $5.40 (20%) ISBN-10:   0671244094 ISBN-13:   9780671244095 Publisher:   Simon & Schuster Category:   Young Adults Pub. Date:   October 1978 Pages:   704 Format:   Paperback
Subjects
PANAMA CANAL
Description/Notes
The epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal. A history of the building of the canal from the first tries of de Lesseps to the opening in 1914. David McCullough was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and educated there and at Yale. Author of John Adams, Brave Companions, Truman, Mornings on Horseback, The Great Bridge, and The Johnstown Flood, he has received the Pulitzer Prize twice (in 1993, for Truman, and in 2001, for John Adams), the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and has twice won the National Book Award. In The Path Between the Seas, acclaimed historian David McCullough delivers an enthralling drama of the sweeping human undertaking that led to the creation of the Panama Canal. He 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. The epic story of the canal's conception and creation contains all the elements of a high drama-international intrigue, mysterious financial maneuvers, important medical discoveries, political scandals, personal failings and triumphs. Applying his remarkable gift for writing lucid, lively exposition, McCullough weaves the many strands of the momentous event into a comprehensive and captivating tale. The Path Between the Seas is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, the history of science and engineering, and a vivid human drama. The Washington StarDavid McCullough's history of this extraordinary construction job between the Atlantic and Pacific is everything history ought to be. It is dramatic, accurate...and altogether gripping. Christopher Lehmann-HauptThe New York TimesA chunk of history full of giant-sized characters and rich in political skullduggery. The New York Daily NewsIn the hands of McCullough, the digging of the great ditch becomes a kind of peacetime epic...The book will absorb you...You won't want to put it down once you've started reading it. NewsweekMcCullough is a storyteller with the capacity to steer readers through political, financial, and engineering intricacies without fatigue or muddle. This is grand-scale, expert work. Chapter 1 Threshold There is a charm of adventure about this new quest...The New York Times I The letter, several pages in length and signed by Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, was addressed to Commander Thomas O. Selfridge. It was an eminently clear, altogether formal document, as expected, and had a certain majesty of tone that Commander Selfridge thought quite fitting. That he and the Secretary were personally acquainted, that they had in fact become pleasantly drunk together on one past occasion and vowed eternal friendship as their carriage rolled through the dark capital, were in no way implied. Nor is it important, except that Selfridge, a serious and sober man on the whole, was to wonder for the rest of his days what influence the evening may have had on the way things turned out for him.His own planning and preparations had already occupied several extremely busy months. The letter was but the final official directive: Navy DepartmentWashington, January 10, 1870Sir: You are appointed to the command of an expedition to make a survey of the Isthmus of Darien, to ascertain the point at which to cut a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The steam-sloop Nipsic and the store-ship Guard will be under your Command...The Department has entrusted to you a duty connected with the greatest enterprise of the present age; and upon your enterprise and your zeal will depend whether your name is honorably identified with one of the facts of the future...No matter how many surveys have been made, or how accurate they may have been, the people of this country will never be satisfied until every point of the Isthmus is surveyed by some responsible authority, and by properly equipped parties, such as will be under your command, working on properly matured plans... So on January 22, 1870, a clear, bright abnormally mild Saturday, the Nipsic cast off at Brooklyn Navy Yard and commenced solemnly down the East River. The Guard, under Commander Edward P. Lull, followed four days later.In all, the expedition comprised nearly a hundred regular officers and men, two Navy doctors, five civilians from the Coast Survey (surveyors and draftsmen), two civilian geologists, three telegraphers from the Signal Corps, and a photographer, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, who had been Mathew Brady's assistant during the war.Stowed below on the Guard was the finest array of modern instruments yet assembled for such an undertaking -- engineers' transits, spirit levels, gradienters, surveyors' compasses and chains, delicate pocket aneroid barometers, mercurial mountain barometers, current meters -- all 'for prosecuting the work vigorously and scientifically.' (The Stackpole transits, made by the New York firm of Stackpole & Sons, had their telescope axis mounted in double cone bearings, for example, which gave the instrument greater rigidity than older models, and the introduction of a simplified horizontal graduation reading allowed for faster readings and less chance of error.) There were rubber blankets and breech-loading rifles for every man, whiskey, quinine, an extra 600 pairs of shoes, and 100 miles of telegraph wire. Stores 'in such shape as to be little liable to injury by exposure to rains' were sufficient for four months: 7,000 pounds of bacon, 10,000 pounds of bread, 6,000 pounds of tomato soup, 30 gallons of beans, 2,500 pounds of coffee, 100 bottles of pepper, 600 pounds of canned butter.The destination was the Darien wilderness on the Isthmus of Panama, more than two thousand miles from Brooklyn, within ten degrees of the equator, and, contrary to the mental picture most people had, east of the 80th meridian -- that is, east of Florida. They would land at Caledonia Bay, about 150 miles east of the Panama Railroad. It was the same point from which Balboa