I believe this is McCullough's first mainstream nonfiction writing, and his trademark way of making nonfiction both informative and readable is already on display. I became interested in the Johnstown Flood when I performed in Johnstown, PA on one of our concert tours. The downtown has lots of markings indicating the water levels during the flood and it is staggering to think about.

The city has experienced several major floods, submerging the town, but the 1889 flood is the most well-known and the one this book addresses. A dam up in the mountains surrounding Johnstown broke during an epic storm and a giant wave of water made it's way down the mountain, knocking down giant trees, bridges, homes, and large buildings. Thousands of people were killed. The town was flooded up and over two story structures.

This novel focuses on the storm and the destruction. It talks about the dam and how it was not properly built or maintained. It also focuses on the wealthy families (including Carnegie, so we're talking REALLY wealthy) who used the dammed lake as a vacation site and had a hunting and fishing club there, but yet did nothing to maintain the dam. McCullough also talks about the clean up effort and Clara Barton's use of her newly formed Red Cross to help the effort.

All in all this is an interesting read, but it left me wanting more. I thought McCullough could have dug in a little deeper and made some harder hitting statements about the whole situation. ( )

An excellent read, but that's what you expect from David McCullough. 4.5 stars ( )

McCullough's first book. A good blend of history, story telling, humor, and gripping drama. The flood section had me spellbound and riveted. ( )

On May 31, 1899, after days of heavy rainfall, the South Fork Dam perched in the mountains 14 miles upstream of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, failed. The result was a catastrophic loss of human lives and an unimaginable level of destruction. In this book first published in 1968, McCullough paints a full and detailed picture of Johnstown and its citizens, industry and culture, as well as the causes of the flood itself and the practical and legal aftermath.

I picked this book up solely because it was McCullough's first book. Previously, I had just barely heard of the flood and had no clue as to its causes or when it even occurred. Told in an engaging narrative nonfiction style, as with all McCullough's books the story and writing here are excellent. The sequence of events, on the other hand, is rather horrifying. Are the wealthy who placed their own enjoyment above the safety of others ever held to account for the 2,208 lives lost? I think you know the answer. Highly recommended. ( )

David McCullough, who died last year, was one of America’s best writers on historical subjects. He studied English and art at Yale, went to work for the U.S. Information Agency during the Kennedy administration, and discovered his true calling when he saw a Library of Congress display of photographs of the devastation caused by the 1889 collapse of a reservoir dam above a Pennsylvania coal mining town. The reservoir was a private fishing resort owned by the titans of the steel industry in Pittsburgh, 65 miles away. The flood wiped out several closely packed communities and killed more than 2,000 people.
When McCullough could not find a book that told him what he wanted to know about the event, he decided to write the book he wanted to read. He faced a significant problem sifting out the “wild exaggerations and outright nonsense” of newspaper accounts that many people of the time found credible. He sifted through photographs, letters, diaries, and interviews with survivors.
The result reads like the best new journalism, letting people tell their stories with enough factual background to make the events clear and vivid. For many, the flood was experienced first as a sound in the dark: “It began as a deep, steady rumble, they would say; then it grew louder and louder until it became an avalanche of sound, ‘a roar like thunder.’” One man described it memorably as “just like a lot of horses grinding oats.”
McCullough’s conclusions are few but telling. The dam builders were not the experts they pretended to be, and the people of Johnstown mistakenly assumed that “the people who were responsible for their safety were behaving responsibly.” These are lessons we still need to learn. ( )