1977, Simon & Schuster, 698 pages
I read this book in 2009 and it made such a deep impression in my mind, that when I saw it on display at the bookstore yesterday much of it came flooding back. In 2009 when I began writing Of The Sunset World I took a line from a quote in the mid portion of the book from John Stevens, Chief Engineer or the canal, as the inspirational quote to kick off the book. In response to an expectation to wax jingoistic about the exploits of he and his men in Panama, this most accomplished of engineers said this about one of man’s few successful attempts to alter the geography of the planet by digging what amounts to a ditch across one of its narrowest portions, “…we are but children picking up pebbles on the shore of the boundless ocean…”
Stevens was one of a half dozen larger than life characters that walk across the pages of David McCullough’s 44-year long drama. Theodore Roosevelt, who I personally rate as a louse, shines in this episode of our nation’s imperial story. If you were keeping a plus and minus ledger of Teddy’s career achievements his involvement in the building of the canal would be on the plus side and probably at the top.
McCullough writes big history in an engaging style that sucks the reader in to a drama that literally was far larger than life. France suffered an economic reverse of huge proportions because of her involvement with the canal. Panama was literally created out of a Columbian rump steak to form a malleable host nation for the canal. That drama alone is a worthy story for a book. The greatest story thread in The Path Between the Seas had to be the quest to defeat yellow fever. Again, just this portion of the story was worthy of its own book.
Overall, the heart of McCullough’s monumental work is the exposition of mankind’s struggle to tame, alter, and even transcend his environment. As a science-fiction writer the tremendous multifaceted quest to cut a canal between a sea and an ocean calls up images of Man’s long interrupted quest to build the means to settle other bodies in the solar system and makes one hopeful still.
