90 books like The Path Between the Seas

A journey on foot and by sea from Belize to Panama along the Mosquito Coast. Few roads penetrate this land of thick jungle, home to native Miskito, Rama, and Garifuna peoples, and at the time of his trip, rife with drug smugglers, CIA-sponsored rebels fighting the Sandinistas, and normal people living ordinary lives. It’s an unusual travel book about a little-known region, and it made me want to go there.

An account of El Salvador’s era of “disappearances” from one of the best non-fiction writers of her generation. Didion interviews the president, visits smoldering body dumps on the edge of San Salvador, and captures the atmosphere of revolution, civil strife, and Soviet-American rivalry that afflicted El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala in the 1980s. Essential reading for understanding the scars that continue to plague the region today.

Henry Morgan was the scourge of the Spanish Main. Riches were brought to Europe each year by a treasure fleet of heavily armed galleons that collected loot on the coast of Panama before setting sail for the old world. Morgan captured Spain’s coastal fort of Portobelo and did what none had done before — crossed the isthmus to sack Panama City. He would later become acting Governor of Jamaica, but his exploits as a privateer, ably told by naval historian Dudley Pope, cemented his legend.

Far from being an extinct people swallowed by the jungle-like their famous temples, the Maya make up a significant percentage of the population of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, with vibrant ancient languages that are still spoken today. This beautifully written account of contemporary Maya culture will help you understand a remarkable people who explored the world through arithmetic and time.

Any understanding of transport networks across the Isthmus (road, river, railroad, and Canal) must consider the conquest of the Inca Empire.

MacQuarrie’s book illustrates how Panama was the staging ground for Pizarro’s small band of entrepreneurs who conquered the largest empire ever in the Americas. And, later, how the gold and silver from Peru was transported back to Spain across Panama.

Moreover, the book details how a bloody civil war between the conquerors almost cost them the fruits of their original victory. All of this set the stage for what would later come to much of Latin America.

While dozens of books have focused on the building of the Canal, woefully few have looked at the construction of the Panama Railroad.

In many ways, the completion of the Panama Railroad was an even greater accomplishment than the building of the Canal. And, simply stated, had there been no Railroad, there would have never been a Canal.

Unlike the U.S. government-funded Canal, the Railroad was a private venture that nearly went bankrupt. The story of the “Yankee Strip, as it was called, is one of great daring, monumental struggles, hard work, and some good old-fashioned luck.

Larger-than-life personalities have dominated much of the story of the Canal since it was envisioned.

Spain’s Charles V, the most powerful monarch ever to reign, believed a Canal would be the source of inestimable wealth and power. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the conquistador of Suez, and arguably the biggest celebrity of his time, tried his hand in Panama to connect the Seas. Theodore Roosevelt bet his presidency on succeeding where others had failed.

Still, it was John Frank Stevens, one of America’s greatest civil engineers, who is singularly most responsible for overcoming the obstacles that nature put in the way to build the Canal. Firm, unassuming, and incredibly determined, Stevens embodied America’s rise from the end of the Civil War to victory in World War 2.

Stevens lived at the forefront of the nation’s rise to a superpower, most particularly when he saved the Canal project from complete failure.

Anderson’s compelling work details the search for a strait connecting the Seas from the beginning of the discovery, conquest, and settlement by the Spaniards of Panama and the surrounding reaches.

Compelling narratives about Columbus’ four voyages to America, the discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Vasco Nunez de Balboa, an account of the indigenous people of the Isthmus, the daring raids of Sir Francis Drake, and the sacking of Panama City by the pirate Henry Morgan are woven around the centuries-long quest to bring the two oceans together.

Theodore Roosevelt is another presidential figure that has received a great deal of scholarly attention. I ultimately selected Theodore Rex for two reasons. First, it’s one of the few books that focuses solely on the presidency, meaning it offers an unrivaled, in-depth examination of his years in office. Second, it’s such a page-turner. I started reading a specific section to better understand one cabinet interaction and I found myself still reading many pages and many hours later without even realizing it. Morris fully captures TR’s oversized personality in an extraordinarily colorful way.

What could be better, if you wish to learn about the U.S. filibustering adventurers who invaded Latin America in the 1850s, than to read an account by the most famous of them—William Walker, who left Gold Rush California in 1855 to participate in a Nicaraguan Civil War and rose to the presidency there? The War in Nicaragua is Walker’s own autobiographical account of his campaigns and experiences in Nicaragua. Pay attention, particularly, to what he says about slavery and White supremacy towards the end of the book. And remember that Walker conquered Nicaragua over a half-century before the Panama Canal was built. Did his intervention there have anything to do with how Americans got from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean during the Gold Rush?