Johnstown FloodSimon & Schuster, 1968 - 304 sider 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. |
Indhold
List of Illustrations | 15 |
The sky was red | 19 |
Sailboats on the mountain | 39 |
Copyright | |
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Annie Bedford street Broad street Cambria City Cambria County Cambria Iron Company Carnegie cars Clinton street Conemaugh street dead debris disaster East Conemaugh Emma engineer feet Fishing and Hunting flood Frank Frick Fulton George Gertrude Heiser Henry Clay Frick hill hillside Hoffman Hotel Hulbert House Hunting Club James John Johnstown Johnstown Flood Jones lake Lake Conemaugh later Little Conemaugh lived Lizzie Locust street looked Maggie Main street Market street Mary miles mills Millville Mineral Point morning Morrell mountain named nearly night Parke passengers Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Railroad Pitcairn Pittsburgh Quinn Railroad street rain reporters river roof Rose Ruff running seemed Somerset street South Fork Creek South Fork dam South Fork Fishing spillway stone bridge Stony Creek story Swank things told tower town tracks train trees Unger Union street valley Vine street Walnut street Washington street William window Woodvale wreckage wrote yards