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"If I were the biggest liar on earth, I could not tell you half."
Timely reading, this masterful and pleasing account of an unavoidable disaster that cost thousands of lives. In 1889, not now, people.
McCullough is such a joy to read, jargon-free, free of tiring analysis, he simply and sympathetically presents things as they are, rare for historical works these days. Having grown up in western Pennsylvania, his first book must have been close to his heart. Myself, I'd always heard about the Flood, my mother having grown up in Johnstown, but I never had a clear sense of just how fucking horrible it was! The sad part was, an entire town was destroyed and 2000+ people died in the flood (the descriptions here of the wall of water and debris as culled from eyewitnesses is worse than anything you'll read this week!) when the South Fork dam broke, but it didn't need to be. That's McCullough's main point in the end: if humans want to try and tame nature, go for it, but you better know what you're doing. Oh, and don't leave your fate in the hands of the wealthy either. The so-called "betters", which included, amazingly, Andrew Carnegie, who had a summer resort at the dam did almost nothing to make sure the dam, which had threatened to burst for decades, wouldn't burst.
McCullough neatly ties these heinous oversights and apathies to the trend at the time of a lashing back against the wealthy and American bastardy in general, the stirrings of labor unrest, and the then unimpeachable "rabble" making their voices heard.
Timely reading, this masterful and pleasing account of an unavoidable disaster that cost thousands of lives. In 1889, not now, people.
McCullough is such a joy to read, jargon-free, free of tiring analysis, he simply and sympathetically presents things as they are, rare for historical works these days. Having grown up in western Pennsylvania, his first book must have been close to his heart. Myself, I'd always heard about the Flood, my mother having grown up in Johnstown, but I never had a clear sense of just how fucking horrible it was! The sad part was, an entire town was destroyed and 2000+ people died in the flood (the descriptions here of the wall of water and debris as culled from eyewitnesses is worse than anything you'll read this week!) when the South Fork dam broke, but it didn't need to be. That's McCullough's main point in the end: if humans want to try and tame nature, go for it, but you better know what you're doing. Oh, and don't leave your fate in the hands of the wealthy either. The so-called "betters", which included, amazingly, Andrew Carnegie, who had a summer resort at the dam did almost nothing to make sure the dam, which had threatened to burst for decades, wouldn't burst.
McCullough neatly ties these heinous oversights and apathies to the trend at the time of a lashing back against the wealthy and American bastardy in general, the stirrings of labor unrest, and the then unimpeachable "rabble" making their voices heard.
