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The bestselling author of The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback makes available again his classic chronicle of the tragic Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1889.
List of contents
ContentsList of Illustrations
I The sky was red
II Sailboats on the mountain
III "There's a man came from the lake."
IV Rush of the torrent
V "Run for your lives!"
VI message from Mr. Pitcairn
VII In the valley of death
VIII "No pen can describe"
IX "Our misery is the work of man."
List of Victims
Bibliography
Index
About the author
David McCullough (1933–2022) twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for
Truman and
John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for
The Path Between the Seas and
Mornings on Horseback. His other acclaimed books include
The Johnstown Flood,
The Great Bridge,
Brave Companions,
1776,
The Greater Journey,
The American Spirit,
The Wright Brothers, and
The Pioneers. He was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Visit DavidMcCullough.com.
Summary
The stunning story of one of America’s great disasters, a preventable tragedy of Gilded Age America, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.
At the end of the nineteenth 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.
Additional text
John Leonard The New York Times We have no better social historian.
