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Title: Engrossing Piece of Social History
Review: With a remarkable economy of descriptive language, McCullough chronicles the horrors of the natural and social disaster of the 1889 Johnstown flood. American innovation and rapid industrialization had generated an increasingly complex economy with its benefits and woes. Much of this story is about realization of the new phenomena of society's mega-rich and their interactions with the rest of society. This story is a graphic description of how weather, extreme wealth, industry, rapid social and human nature can be combined to yield all sorts of effects. It is by no means a must read but a remarkably bright piece of social history that exercises the imagination and diffuses many of history's more detailed lessons.
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