• The Path Between the Seas

  • The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
  • By: David McCullough
  • Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
  • Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (712 ratings)

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The Path Between the Seas  By  cover art

The Path Between the Seas

By: David McCullough
Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
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Publisher's summary

Winner of the National Book Award for history, The Path Between the Seas 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. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous 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.
©2003 David McCullough (P)2003 Simon and Schuster Inc. All rights reserved. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon and Schuster Audio Division, Simon and Schuster Inc.
  • Abridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

"A chunk of history full of giant-sized characters and rich in political skullduggery." (The New York Times)

What listeners say about The Path Between the Seas

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

The Path Between The Seas

David McCullough's work should NEVER be abridged...but if abridgements of his work MUST be offered, an unabridged version should go without saying. It is a matter of profound wonder and amazement that this work is not available in its entirety. What were you guys thinking? Edward Hermann is an outstanding narrator. But I feel cheated. I somehow missed that this outstanding work was abridged. I would have never purchased it had I known that it was.

I don't get it.

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21 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Something for Everyone

A little bit for everyone: international intrigue, history, finance, public health, history, engineering. But alas this is an abridged version. From my perspective, to much time was spent on the politics in Washington to build the canal and not enough time on the engineering and public health issues of building the canal. Perhaps the unabridged version, unfortunately not available on Audible :-(, gave more time to the subjects I found of interest.

I would have liked to have seen Ambrose written on the subject. With his writing on the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads and how they came to be, he would have done a masterful job with equal weightings to all the subjects mentioned above.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

The Path Between the Seas Abridged

I never buy abridges books but A Path Between the Seas by David McCullough wasn't available unabridged.

This is a book of history but so much info is left out. There are gaps in the retelling of the very interesting time of American history. People just appear and disappear abruptly. Incidence and documents are referred to with no explanation or foundation. A careful listen still leaves the reader wondering.

I feel cheated. I listened several times to the book thinking I had missed episodes that were important to the meaning of the flow of history, but I hadn't, things were left out. The reader was left hanging wondering what happened between here and there, and who is this important person and where did he/she come from

The least Audible could do is warn their customers that this book is poorly abridged and that there is no unabridged version. It's a good read as a novel but falls short of McCullough's other high quality unabridged history books. The abridgement degrades Mr. McCullough's fine reputation.

From audible.com:
"What the Critics Say"
"A chunk of history full of giant-sized characters and rich in political skullduggery." (The New York Times)

The Critics must have read the unabridged version.

A disappointment. Simon and Schuster missed the boat here.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Enlightening

I had always viewed the building of the Panama Canal as something akin to the building of the Empire State building or the Apollo space program... something that was far on the fringe of engineering possibility of the time. While I assumed construction captured the attention at the time and was admired as an engineering feat afterwards. After listening to this title, I now realize that building the canal could be characterized as an obsession of an era... a just-out-of-reach-vision for half a century.

I found the book both well written and well researched. Narration was first rate.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Not just dry history but deep personal stories

The author starts with the French valiant but doomed attempt to build a canal across Panama and as always he tells very deep and personal stories - not just a collection of dry facts. You will learn so much more about this complex enterprise and come to admire the men and women who tried and failed and then succeeded.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

decent, but slow at times

The story was interesting, and the detail was great to hear, especially how they?re dealing with mosquitoes causing diseases (shades of West Nile!). However, there wasn?t enough personal experience, most is seen through the eyes of the leaders, and not enough of the workers. You want to know how these men spent their days, but too much time is spent on the French and how they failed.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The Dream of Engineers, the Path of Industry

What more can be said about the Panama Canal and the men and effort that was put into making it happen is likely to be all together overly specific for a general audience. This book despite being abridged covers each event in the life of the canal wonderfully from the French efforts to the US backed rebellion to its completion perfectly and is easy to understand and follow. This is a wonderful book and is well worth the listen.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent

I visited the Panama Canal in August and then listened to this audio book. It is very informative about everything you ever wanted, or needed to know about the Panama canal.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Outstanding !!!!

I was amazed on how much I did not know about the Panama Canal. This book was hard to stop listening to. Edward Herman is fantastic. I'm so glad that he is the narrator for the John Adams book.

David McCollough really dug deep..pun intended. I really, really enjoyed this and would highley recommend buying this. I don't write many reviews but felt compelled to do so here...ENJOY

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Another great McCullough read

This is a wonderful book - great pace and very interesting. While I did know some of the basics of the Panama Canal - the author goes into far greater details, over many years, as to the political ramimifications of the ulitmate canal site - the operational and business aspects and how various diseases were combated along the way. Ed Hermann does another good job as narrator. Highly recommend!

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2 people found this helpful