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Book Review Of Johnstown Flood

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Johnstown flood is a non-fiction book written by David McCullough. It details the events of the May 1881 flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The flood devastated Johnstown and resulted in 2,209 deaths. The cause of the flood was the rupture of the nearby Three Mile Dam. The dam was known to the people of Johnstown as the “South Fork dam,” which is the term that will be used in this paper. David McCullough is a professional historian. He has written numerous books on a wide range of topics. His most famous book is a Pulitzer-prize winning biography of Harry Truman. Another one of his famous books also won the Pulitzer prize and is a biography of John Adams. His net worth is approximately $200 million. He is an 83-year-old caucasian male. The Johnstown Flood is McCullough’s first published work. The South Fork dam was a dam that formed Lake Conemaugh. The lake was artificial and used for the pleasure of various wealthy businessmen from Philadelphia. These men included Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and John Fulton. These men were aware that the dam was unstable, but did little to fix the dam. A bad storm flooded and then broke the dam. The resulting flood, composed of all of the water from Lake Conemaugh, decimated Johnstown. …show more content…

They were aware of the faults in the dam but were not responsible enough to fix them. McCullough gives a few explanations as to why the dam had not been repaired: laziness and greed. I think that it might be a mix of both of them. Those responsible for dam repairs were wealthy. Many rich people are greedy and do not want to lose their money; repairing the dam would cost money. In addition to the greed, the owners of the South Fork dam were lazy and procrastinated on the repair of the dam. They did decide to repair the dam years before it broke, but the repairs were not comprehensive or

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