The Johnstown flood [sound recording] / David McCullough.
Material type:
SoundPublisher number: SSA74354086A | Simon & Schuster AudioPublication details: New York, NY : Simon & Schuster Audio, p2005.Edition: Unabridged edDescription: 8 sound discs (ca. 10 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 inISBN: - 0743540867
- 9780743540865
- Producer and director, Carol Shapiro ; associate producer, Suzanne Wetzel.
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Audiobook
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Main Library | Audiobook | 363.3493 M133 | Available | 33111007847656 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The stunning story of one of America's great disasters, a preventable tragedy of Gilded Age America, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. Despite repeated warnings of possible danger, nothing was done about the dam. Then came May 31, 1889, when the dam burst, sending a wall of water thundering down the mountain, smashing through Johnstown, and killing more than 2,000 people. It was a tragedy that became a national scandal.
Graced by David McCullough's remarkable gift for writing richly textured, sympathetic social history, The Johnstown Flood is an absorbing, classic portrait of life in nineteenth-century America, of overweening confidence, of energy, and of tragedy. It also offers a powerful historical lesson for our century and all times: the danger of assuming that because people are in positions of responsibility they are necessarily behaving responsibly.
Compact discs.
Producer and director, Carol Shapiro ; associate producer, Suzanne Wetzel.
Edward Herrmann, reader.
In the spring of 1889, Johnstown, Pennsylvania was a booming coal-and-steel town. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for a summer resort patronized by the likes of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. Warnings of possible danger were ignored, and on May 31, the dam burst, sending a wall of water through the town and killing more than 2,000 people. David McCullough examines the tragedy and the scandal that followed.