The Johnstown Flood
David McCullough • 1968
Devastation Rating
natural disaster flood history class
Our Take
A dam owned by Pittsburgh's wealthiest club broke in 1889 and killed over two thousand people downstream. McCullough tells it with the architectural precision he brought to all his best work — the dam's engineering failures, the negligence, the twenty million tons of water. The class dimension is inescapable: the rich maintained their fishing retreat; the poor were buried in mud.
Appears In
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