The Path Between the Seas

McCullough on the forty-year effort to cut a canal through Panama — the French failure, the disease, the politics and the engineering, and what a project at that scale does to the people running it.

Why it’s on the list: Named independently in two of the crowd-sourced book lists Kyle saved in 2025 — @moseskagan’s historical-fiction thread and @typesfast’s best-history-book thread. A title that separate crowds reach for in answer to different questions is the signal worth acting on.

Where I saw it: In Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note, from @moseskagan asking “What historical fiction should I read next?” (April 13, 2025), the full recovered list on What historical fiction should I… (tweet); and from @typesfast asking “What’s the best history book you’ve read?” (June 5, 2025), the full recovered list on What’s the best history book… (tweet). The reply threads were transcribed by hand on September 17, 2026, because X’s syndication endpoint returns only a thread’s head post, never the replies.

Connections

• What historical fiction should I… (tweet) — the thread this came out of; the full recovered list lives there.
• What’s the best history book… (tweet) — the thread this came out of; the full recovered list lives there.
• Infrastructure
• City Building