Zusatztext Newsweek McCullough 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. Informationen zum Autor David McCullough has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His other acclaimed books include The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, Brave Companions, 1776, The Greater Journey, The American Spirit, The Wright Brothers, and The Pioneers. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. Visit DavidMcCullough.com. Klappentext The building of the Panama Canal was one of the most grandiose! dramatic! and sweeping adventures of all time. Spanning nearly half a century! from its beginnings by a France in pursuit of glory to its completion by the United States on the eve of World War I! it enlisted men! nations! and money on a scale never before seen. Apart from the great wars! it was the largest! costliest single effort ever mounted anywhere on earth! and it affected the lives of tens of thousands of people throughout the world. Here in all its heartbreak and eventual triumph the epic adventure is brought vividly alive by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such books as "The Johnstown Flood! The Great Bridge! Truman!" and "John Adams." Filled with vivid detail and incident! "The Path Between the Seas" is not only a fact-filled account of an unprecedented engineering feat; it is also the story of the people who were caught up in it -- some to win fame and fortune! others to have their reputations and even their lives destroyed. For many it was the adventure of a lifetime! an adventure whose like will never be seen again. Out of it came a revolution! the birth of a new nation! the conquest of yellow fever! and the expansion of American power. Told from many viewpoints! this is an account drawn from previously unpublished and undiscovered sources! from interviews with actual participants and their families! from material gathered in Paris! Bogota! Panama! the Canal Zone! and Washington. It is a canvas filled with memorable people: Ferdinand de Lesseps and his son Charles! trying to repeat de Lesseps's Suez triumph; Jules Verne; Paul Gauguin; Gustave Eiffel; A. T. Mahan and Richard Harding Davis; SenatorMark Hanna; Secretary of State John Hay; the incredible Philippe Bunau-Varilla! "the man who invented Panama"; Dr. William Gorgas; the forgotten American engineer hero John Stevens; Colonel George Washington Goethals; and! above all! Theodore Roosevelt! who "took Panama" in 1903 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 Department Washington, January 10, 1870 Sir: You are appointed to the command of an expedition to make a survey of the Isthmus of Darien, to ascertai...

Autorentext

David McCullough (1933–2022) twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His other acclaimed books include The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, Brave Companions, 1776, The Greater Journey, The American Spirit, The Wright Brothers, and The Pioneers. He was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Visit DavidMcCullough.com.

Klappentext

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 transformed global trade routes and shaped modern American history, as told by Pulitzer Prize–winning author and master historian David McCullough.

A national bestseller and testament to human determination, The Path Between the Seas tells the stories of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing a maritime passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. McCullough masterfully recounts astonishing engineering and medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. Applying his remarkable gift for writing lucid, lively exposition, McCullough weaves the many strands of the momentous event into a comprehensive and captivating tale.

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, technological innovation, international intrigue, and human drama.

Leseprobe
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 Department

Washington, January 10, 1870

Sir: 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 (su…