The Johnstown flood

History

First published: 1968
Print length: 302 pagesSimon & Schuster, 2004

Description

David McCullough chronicles Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a prosperous coal-and-steel town populated by working families. Above it stood an old earth dam rebuilt to serve an exclusive resort lake favored by industrial tycoons. Warnings about the dam’s danger were repeatedly disregarded. In 1889, its catastrophic failure devastated Johnstown and led to a national scandal. McCullough follows the circumstances surrounding the disaster, the destruction it brought to the community, and the public reckoning that followed, connecting the town’s industrial prosperity and social divisions with the neglected danger looming above it.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Direct · Journalistic

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Dark · Earnest · Reflective · Tense

Structure

Chronological nonfiction

Focus

Ideas · Information · Plot

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

ClassCommunityInequalityJusticeMortalityPower

About David McCullough

David McCullough was an American historian and author whose narrative histories brought large public events into focus through individual character and lived experience. He worked from archives, primary documents, interviews, and broad research, then shaped that material into direct, descriptive accounts accessible to general readers. His range included presidential biography in Truman and John Adams, military history in 1776, and the political and technical history of major engineering projects in The Great Bridge and The Path Between the Seas. Across these subjects, McCullough was drawn to people carrying responsibility under pressure: leaders contending with doubt and political necessity, engineers confronting physical limits, and institutions strained by ambition, conflict, and circumstance. He combined a biographer’s interest in temperament and relationships with a historian’s attention to logistics, technology, and public consequence. The result is history organized around decision and effort, with prominent figures placed among the colleagues, opponents, workers, and ordinary participants who helped determine events.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Language: English
ISBN: 9780671207144

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