The Johnstown Flood

VERY GOOD condition — DUST JACKET: Minor wear & tear to top and bottom edges of spine, panels, folds and flaps. Minor chipping/tears to top and bottom of spine, primarily corners. Ink markings top of front flap. Very faint foxing spots to reverse of upper flaps. BOARDS: Very good condition. BOOK: Very good condition. Nice topstain. Several spots of light foxing to top area of pastedowns. Please inspect photos closely for condition details.

Here on offer is a very nice copy of popular historian David McCullough's first book, The Johnstown Flood, a chronicling of the devastating event of 1899 that besieged the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania and effectively launched the author's career. This copy is a 1st trade edition, 1st printing of the work published by Simon & Schuster in 1968. The dust jacket is protected from further wear by a Mylar sleeve.

*********************************************************

"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."

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

David Gaub McCullough (July 7, 1933 – August 7, 2022) was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, McCullough earned a degree in English literature from Yale University. His first book was The Johnstown Flood (1968), and he wrote nine more on such topics as Harry S. Truman, John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Panama Canal, and the Wright brothers. McCullough also narrated numerous documentaries, such as The Civil War by Ken Burns, as well as the 2003 film Seabiscuit, and he hosted the PBS television documentary series American Experience for twelve years.

McCullough's two Pulitzer Prize-winning books—Truman and John Adams—were adapted by HBO into a TV film and a miniseries, respectively. . . .

McCullough "had no anticipation that [he] was going to write history, but [he] stumbled upon a story that [he] thought was powerful, exciting, and very worth telling." While working at American Heritage, McCullough wrote in his spare time for three years. The Johnstown Flood, a chronicle of one of the worst flood disasters in United States history, was published in 1968 to high praise by critics.[ John Leonard, of The New York Times, said of McCullough, "We have no better social historian."

The above text was taken from, respectively, Simon & Schuster publishing (via Google Books) and Wikipedia.