Read The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 By David McCullough Full Books Online in HD Quality

On December 31, 1999, after nearly a century of rule, the United States officially ceded ownership of the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama. That nation did not exist when, in the mid-19th century, Europeans first began to explore the possibilities of creating a link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow but mountainous isthmus; Panama was then a remote and overlooked part of Colombia.

All that changed, writes David McCullough in his magisterial history of the Canal, in 1848, when prospectors struck gold in California. A wave of fortune seekers descended on Panama from Europe and the eastern United States, seeking quick passage on California-bound ships in the Pacific, and the Panama Railroad, built to serve that traffic, was soon the highest-priced stock listed on the New York Exchange.

To build a 51-mile-long ship canal to replace that railroad seemed an easy matter to some investors. But, as McCullough notes, the construction project came to involve the efforts of thousands of workers from many nations over four decades; eventually those workers, laboring in oppressive heat in a vast malarial swamp, removed enough soil and rock to build a pyramid a mile high. In the early years, they toiled under the direction of French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps, who went bankrupt while pursuing his dream of extending France's empire in the Americas.

The United States then entered the picture, with President Theodore Roosevelt orchestrating the purchase of the canal—but not before helping foment a revolution that removed Panama from Colombian rule and placed it squarely in the American camp.

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914

More Books

Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69

Stephen E. Ambrose

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

Erik Larson

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook

Hampton Sides

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn

Christopher Cox

Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue

Buddy Levy

American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873

Alan Taylor

Grant

Ron Chernow

To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism

Sean McMeekin

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

David Grann

Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier

Stephen E. Ambrose

Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency

Joshua Green