Epic. That is the word for this book. Well, really its the word for the whole building the Panama Canal undertaking, but McCullough is a narrative history genius and does a fantastic job of getting you all caught up in the thrill and the horror and the absolute hugeness of building the canal. But McCullough is not for the faint of heart; this is a fat, dense book, and obviously an early entry in McCullough oeuvre -- his skill as a writer was much improved by the time he got around to Truman.

Nevertheless, I'm giving it a full 10 marks because I loved it. And also, THE PANAMA CANAL!

On an unrelated note there were some glitches in the Kindle formatting, which were annoying, but Kindle was the way to go with this dinosaur of a book.