Product Description

Describes all the events and personalities involved in the monumental undertaking which precipitated revolution, scandal, economic crisis, and a new Central American republic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41619 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

Review
"The New York Daily News"In 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.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant author, most exciting history book I know of.
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.

Epic!
Perhaps I am biased, having grown up in the Panama Canal Zone. All prejudices apart, though, this is the single best "history" book I have ever read. With a cast of characters worthy of a Tolstoy novel, McCullough gives the reader a thorough understanding of the magnitude and impact the little Isthmus of Panama has had on the history of the world.

This is much more than history. Indeed, the common claim that it reads like a novel is not an exaggeration. The 600+ pages overflow with unrelenting drama, vividly painted larger-than-life characters, exotic vistas, bustling courtrooms, etc. This is more a story about the people who struggled to realize a dream than it is about the little canal which captured their imaginations for centuries.

This book moved me to tears.

Fantastic!
This is the first book by David McCullough that I've read, and let me say I am impressed. I read this book while I was bedridden with an illness and McCullough's thorough research and excellent prose sucked me right into the middle of the struggles to complete this wonder of the world. And I liked it!