The Engineering That Built the World

Two powerful nations--France and America--compete to build a path just 50 miles long that will connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Completing it will cost 30 thousand lives, $600 million dollars, and require overcoming every obstacle imaginable--from mudslides to malaria to bankruptcy.

After the London Underground becomes the first subway system in the world, visionary engineers in New York and Boston vie to build the first one in America. But being first will mean overcoming unprecedented engineering challenges.

A century before the Internet, two brave visionaries, Collin Perry and Cyrus Field, endure failure and heartache while risking everything to connect the United States to the rest of the world with a cable under the ocean.