The Johnstown Flood

Rating:
Summary: Social History and culture superbly tied together...
Review: "The Johnstown Flood" is an excellent vehicle for describing the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th Century and the culture of those times and David McCullough does both superbly with this book. An intimate discussion of the Steel industry and it's relationship to towns just like Johnstown is framed by the gruesome details of the disaster and, as always in a David McCullough book, in a highly personal way that draws in the reader and lets him be a part of the story. We get the all important background of the development of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting club as well as the building/maintaining history of the Dam. The storm and it's affect on not only Conemaugh Lake, but all the surrounding tributaries (as they integrate to form the lake) is described in such terms as to give the reader the portent of the coming disaster. The "human" story is combined with the tragic reality of the "wall of water" as it carves it's path through the countryside and it gives the reader the perspective needed to see the true devastation to the towns. The only critiques to this book that I'd even mention are that I would have liked to have read more on the floods' path as it passed Johnstown and went through Cambria City and how it subsequently dissapated (we read how debris and bodies are discovered all the way into Pittsburgh, for example). Also, the story of how the town was re-built and a disclosure of any monuments to the disaster that exist today would have closed the story out for me a little better...but these are very minor omittances and they don't detract from the central theme at all. Overall, this book is just another in the long line of fabulous historical writings that David McCullough has made into an art form and is highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting novel and excellent resource
Review: I became interested in the Johnstown Flood after having seen a documentary on it several years ago. I grew up in western Pennsylvania, and had always heard about the Johnstown Flood but didn't really know too much about it. After having read David McCullough's excellent book, I felt like I knew the town and people personally. I visited there afterward -- the Johnstown Flood Museum and the site of the lake and dam in South Fork -- both of which are worth a visit if you are interested in history. If you are planning to see either, read the book first!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book!
Review: I was born in Johnstown and lived in Western PA until I graduated from college. I then moved to Washington, DC. About 4 years later, a coworked told me that he always wanted to visit Johnstown. At the time I couldn't understand why, so I asked. He went on to explain how he was reading "The Johnstown Flood" by David McCullough in Iowa in 1977 when he heard a radio announcement about the 1977 Johnstown Flood. I lived through the 1977 flood, and knew about the 1939 Johnstown Flood that my father lived through, but I knew little about the 1889 Flood. I bought this book the day after this friend recommended it and read it straight through cover to cover - I couldn't put it down. That weekend, I drove back to Johnstown and visited the Flood Memorial and the Flood Museum. I couldn't hold back the tears at these sites.

This book completely changed my opinion of the Johnstown area and its history. I can't believe how many natives of Johnstown have never read this book. I have recommended this book to many people and not one has ever told me he or she didn't sink themselves into the book and become part of the story.

I now work in Johnstown again. Every workday I drive by the stone bridge that was described so prominently in the book. In my mind I can picture the victims and the debris piled up against the structure. Sometimes I can even hear the water, the flames, and the cries for help. This book is that well written!

If you're from Johnstown and you haven't read this book . . . Shame on you! If you're not from Johnstown, still read this book. Then . . . come to Johnstown and see for yourself what David McCullough brought to life through his writing!

This is definitely a book you'll never forget.

Don't stop here. Read David McCullough's other books. And, if you get a chance to hear him speak, don't pass it up. He spoke at my commencement 13 years ago and I recently heard him speak again. He's a facinating man with a gift for making readers (and listeners) travel back through time to relive the past.

Rating:
Summary: A well-researched work that reads like a novel
Review: The 1889 Johnstown Flood, perhaps one of the most infamous disasters in American history, was vividly captured in this early work by biographer & historian David McCullough. His book is *the* definitive work on this subject.

McCullough masterfully creates a vivid picture of Johnstown in the 1880s - a booming industrial city with a teeming immigrant population. He parallels his story about the city of Johnstown with the area's reputation as a summer home for the steel magnates of nearby Pittsburgh, and how those two worlds would tragically collide on a rainy May day in 1889.

He goes into almost minute-by-minute detail about how the heavy rains ate away at the earthen dam that held back the private lake of the South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club, and the frantic efforts to save the dam, complementing engineering reports on the dam with great storytelling as the workers tried to prevent the dam from giving way.

McCollough's finest literary moment comes when the dam does give way, and the millions of gallons of water come rushing downstream towards the unsuspecting citizens of Johnstown. It almost seems as if he is bringing the reader along for the ride, yard by yard, as the water rushes down the valley and picks up virtually everthing in is path -- railroad cars and locomotives, trees, fences, livestock, homes, etc. Again, he goes into incredible detail as the torrent of water moves downstream, and he paces this tale like a well-written suspense novel. McCullough's descriptive style made it easy for me to picture the carnage and chaos in my head before the flood hit Johnstown, and this was my favorite part of the book.

When the flood finally reached the city, it sloshed back and forth against a RR bridge and the nearby hills like a kid playing in a bathtub, killing some 2,000 people and virtually levelling the entire city. The author's details again shine through as he describes the suprisingly well-orchestrated attempts by the city fathers and others to help the living and the dead and get the city back on its feet.

Even if you do not regularly read historical works of nonfiction, McCullough's book is fast paced and does an excellent job of holding the reader's attention. He also does not weight the book down by sidetracking the story with minutiae, but uses fine details when they are needed. This work not only gives a exhaustive account of a famous American disaster, but is a colorful window into industrial-era America.

Rating:
Summary: Spendid, moving, tragic history
Review: The Johnstown flood symbolizes the sweeping hand of an elite, distant class of people with little regard for those "beneath them". To create a sense of country life in the Pennsylvania mountains, a few very wealthy people played with Mother Nature, building a cheap damn to form a lovely lake. But the lake proved to be more powerful than the dam, and tragedy poured out. Country lifestyles of the rich and famous came tumbling down a narrow gorge, nearly wiped Johnstown off the map, and forever changed the way Americans looked at dams.

Any school child or any adult who believes that history is boring or absent color simply needs to read this fine book, not only to enjoy a good story but also to learn how charmed lives, misplaced hope, ill-managed technology and simple human error can combine to make tragedy.

If this were fiction, you'd marvel at how he made it up. But it's real, and all the more marvelous in the telling and in the detail.

Rating:
Summary: McCullough is a National Treasure!
Review: This is the third book by David McCullough that I have read and he has never let me down. His research is extensive as usual. It is his ability to tell his story in such a was as to make history come alive however that makes David McCullough such a treasure.

The book starts out introducing the reader to several citizens of Johnstown. Some survive, others do not. For those who do survive the stories of their experences as the flood washed over them are amazing. You will be introduced to six year old Gertrude Quinn later in the book. She gets in trouble earlier that awful day for sitting on the porch with her feet in the water. To my suprise I found that the water was already past the flood stage in Johnstown before the dam broke. Gertrude's father was very worried about the rising water and had ordered his children to stay inside. For going out on the porch she got a couple of "quick spanks" and was hurried inside. When the real flood hit Gertrude's house was destroyed and she found herself floating on a mattress all alone. Soon a small white house floated by with a man clinging to the chimney. She called to him to help her but he ignored her after which she yelled at him that he was a terrible man and added, "I'll never help you." Gertrude did survive. These are the kind of stories that kept me reading this book long after I should have been asleep.

The dam itself had existed for years but had broken in a minor way once before and had never been rebuilt. That is until the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was formed. The dam was repared in a sorry way by the club's founder Benjamin Ruff. He even failed to replace the missing discharge pipes so that the lake's level could not be regulated. The press may have been too critical of Ruff's dam after it broke, one reporter calling it a "mud pile". Still the fact remains that the part of the dam that was swept away was the part Ruff had rebuilt. The old portion of the dam held firm.

There was much talk in Johnstown prior to the flood about the dam breaking. So much so that people had started to take it for granted that the dam was safe and ignored what little warning they did get.

If you are at all interested is American history, are a Weather Channel fan who sits in front of the tube waiting for some natural disaster, or if you like to sit up late and watch old disaster movies you will love this book. Even if you don't fit into any of those descriptions you would still probably like this book. Don't like history at all? This is like no other history book you will ever read. Give it a try!