Johnstown Flood
by David McCullough
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Book Summary Information
Author: David McCulloughEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1987-06
ISBN: 0844662925
Publisher: Peter Smith Pub Inc
Book Reviews of Johnstown Flood
Book Review: Flood's 'Night to Remember'
Summary: 5 Stars
I have just re-read `The Johnstown Flood,' and it brought to mind how similar in structure and narrative methodology it is to Walter Lord's classic account of the Titanic disaster, `A Night to Remember.' Both treat with relatively brief periods of time which are dissected hour by hour. Both recount the respective disasters by carefully setting the stage with principal actors and pivotal events, those of a night and those of a day. Both were due to natural occurrences which could have been avoided, but were not. And both are even similar in the number of lives lost. And both are simply wonderful reads.
Among the crucial differences between them, of course, is that History lovers can actually visit Johnstown relatively easily and see for themselves the setting of the calamity and the efforts that have been made to memorialize it. First, the site of the erstwhile lake is readily accessible and the trip gives some sense of the changes in elevations between it and the town, although the long-gone body of water is difficult to visualize. Then there is a fine museum downtown which very innovatively displays the course and ferocity of the watery onslaught in pictures and interactive models. The highlight is a solid wall of the museum space covered with the kind of debris that would have accumulated at the bridge and elsewhere throughout the town, uniformly colored the inevitable, doleful brown of earth-and civilization itself-disrupted. Then go to a restaurant at the top of a hill overlooking the town and accessible by a funicular. The location provides a perfect view up the valley and I guarantee will send chills down your spine as you picture the flood cascading down and destroying just about every living and standing thing in its path.
Finally, travel to the Grandview Cemetery where most if not all of the victims are interred. The 777 unidentified bodies are buried together in a semi-circle of modest markers overlooked by a marble figure of a watchful angel. My wife and I visited several years ago in early June and there remained at the site a beautiful standing flower arrangement with a ribbon saying, "You are not forgotten." McCullough and the memorializations of the town's residents ensure they are not.
Summary of Johnstown Flood
At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. Despite repeated warnings of possible danger, nothing was done about the dam. Then came May 31, 1889, when the dam burst, sending a wall of water thundering down the mountain, smashing through Johnstown, and killing more than 2,000 people. It was a tragedy that became a national scandal.Graced by David McCullough's remarkable gift for writing richly textured, sympathetic social history, The Johnstown Flood is an absorbing, classic portrait of life in nineteenth-century America, of overweening confidence, of energy, and of tragedy. It also offers a powerful historical lesson for our century and all times: the danger of assuming that because people are in positions of responsibility they are necessarily behaving responsibly.
The history of civil engineering may sound boring, but in David McCullough's hands it is, well, riveting. His award-winning histories of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal were preceded by this account of the disastrous dam failure that drowned Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1889. Written while the last survivors of the flood were still alive, McCullough's narrative weaves the stories of the town, the wealthy men who owned the dam, and the forces of nature into a seamless whole. His account is unforgettable: "The wave kept on coming straight toward him, heading for the very heart of the city. Stores, houses, trees, everything was going down in front of it, and the closer it came, the bigger it seemed to grow.... The height of the wall of water was at least thirty-six feet at the center.... The drowning and devastation of the city took just about ten minutes." A powerful, definitive book, and a tribute to the thousands who died in America's worst inland flood. --Mary Ellen Curtin
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