January Reads Three Books

Three books I read in January:

I grew up hearing about the great Johnstown Flood of May 31, 1889  from family and school history classes; it was the most tragic event  anyone had ever encountered  or heard of in times reflective of industrial growth, a flood that destroyed a town and the area, a disaster that  was never to be forgotten. Somehow, despite my lifetime of reading many of the twice Pulitzer Prize winning author, David McCullough's books, I'd  missed this one, from 1968 so when I found it on the discount shelf at Barnes and Noble, into my purchase stack it went.  McCullough wrote this over 268 pages in a documentary style with the precision and  detail we expect from this wonderful social historian.  All those lost or killed in the flood are memorialized in the book.  It is a  portrait of life in  19th century America, the westward expansion of the country and in the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania area, which  was a booming coal and steel town populated by hard working families, many of whom were immigrants. There is a fascinating description of the building of the railroads over the mountains and the use of levers.   It was the time of certain class division, the haves and the have nots; in contrast to the coal miners and steel workers were the tycoons, great contemporaries Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon.  Johnstown  is in the Allegheny mountains about 60 miles south east of Pittsburgh; construction of Pennsylvania's historic canals, arrival of the Pennsylvania railroad in  the 1850's and the establishment of the Cambria Iron Company led to the boom of Johnstown which before had been a short stop on the way west.   By 1889 there were  nearly 30,000 people living in the boroughs of the  Johnstown valley.  (Today many of  PA areas are referred to as boroughs, I love that word. ) In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earthen  dam was rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort, the South Fork Fishing and  Hunting Club privately owned and  patronized by the tycoons from Pittsburgh.  Despite warnings and skepticism about the safety of the dam, nothing was done. People came to accept that the dam could burst and the town could go, they thought nothing of it.   Then came the storm  moving in from the west from Kansas, Nebraska,  Indiana, unceasing rain, run over rives and on May 31, 1889 when the dam burst and the wall of water thundered down the mountains smashing through Johnstown and killing more than 2000 people.  It was a tragedy that became a national scandal but which also provided the first domestic mobilization of the Red Cross under Clara Barton.  People living  through this really thought it was the end of the world and if the devastation of the  flood waters did not do them in, the  following devastation from fire and epidemics did. 

This is a book for historians and sociologically  or geographically interested readers with bits of humor spicing up the data, photos, sketches and  presentations.   It is amazing to  see the poor quality of the photos from then and more amazing that there were any.  One photo in the book jogged my memory immediately as I recognized the familiar famous photo shown through the early 1960's in PA over the years of my youth, the tree spearing the house.  Here it is in the bottom photo of a page I scanned from the book.   Click on the photo to enlarge it and read about the scene.

I enjoyed this description of Dr. Robert Jackson's founding of a town before the Civil War on pg. 45...."The main attractions at Cresson, aside from the mountain air and scenery, were the iron springs, the best-known of which was the Ignatius Spring, named after the venerable huntsman, Ignatius Adams who first discovered its life- preserving powers and whose ghost was said still to haunt the place.....by  drinking this water, dwelling in the woods, and eating venison, Ignatius lived nearly to the good old age of 100 years...Jackson was against whiskey, slavery, and what he called the present tendency to agglomerate in swarms or accumulate in masses and mobs.  Those gregarious instincts which now impel this race to fix its hopes of earthly happiness on city life alone, would, he was convinced, be the undoing of the race.  Life in the country was the answer to practically every one of man's ills...."  I suspect  Dr Jackson would consider our modern mega cities proof of the decline of the human race! 

As I read I wondered about the liability of the tycoons and the resort owners for the failure of that dam; they were not the original builders but they did perform some adjustments.  I learned on pg. 259 that  the few lawsuits that were filed against the club were all futile.  Certainly not what would happen in today's litigious society and sympathetic courts.  McCullough raises this question too speculating that by today's standards, courts and awards to plaintiffs would have been immeasurable and would have changed the industrial growth of the United States.  

In  the concluding pages McCullough summarizes the Johnstown disaster (pg. 262) "while there is no question that an act of God  (the storm) brought on the disaster, there is also no question that it was in the last analysis, mortal man who was truly to blame. And if the men of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, as well as the men of responsibility in Johnstown, had in retrospect looked dispassionately to themselves, and not to their stars to find the fault, they would have seen that they had been party to two crucial mistakes.  In the first place they had tampered drastically with the natural order of things and had done so badly.  They had ravaged much of the mountain country's protective timber, which caused dangerous flash runoff following mountain storms; they obstructed and diminished the capacity of the rivers; and they had bungled the repair and maintenance of the dam.  Perhaps worst of all, they had failed--out of indifference mostly --to comprehend the possible  consequences of what they were doing....one New England newspaper wrote: the lesson of the flood is that the catastrophies of Nature have to be regarded in the structures of man as well as its ordinary laws....The point is that if man for any reason drastically alters the natural order, setting in motion whole series of chain reactions, then he had better know what he is doing.. What is more, the members of the club and most of Johnstown went along on the assumption that the people who were responsible for their safety were behaving responsibly.  And this was the second great mistake."    I added this bold face because it is a statement to caution us today, how do we know when people in positions of responsibility are  really behaving responsibly despite our  24/7 media?   The Johnstown Flood is another of those books that generates pondering as well as informing. 

A friend recommended the high paced, fiction, political intrigue/action books by Vince Flynn as something I might enjoy and I finally did pick up one which will not be the last, when I want to read action.  The paperback , "Transfer of Power" introduces Mitch Rapp, a new CIA operative in counter terrorism, someone who has been around the bend more than once. It reminded me of the TV series hero, Jack Bauer on "24".  In this thriller terrorists have taken possession of the White House, the president has been evacuated to the safe bunker and the vice president is in charge. Rapp is dispatched with an old timer to access entry unbeknown to the terrorists who are holding hostages and killing them.  I avidly turned all 549 pages and have added Vince Flynn to my Facebook likes. Having a career in  state government though not in espionage I laughed at and recognized this author's descriptions reflecting accurate perceptions.  Pg. 130, "After several minutes, Rapp conclude that no one in Baxter's  group knew their head from their ass, and in the process of coming to this conclusion, he also discovered a correlation between their opinions and the conviction with which they stated them.  It seemed that the less someone knew, the more forcefully he tried to state his case."   

My friend told me that the author has consulted with the government's  counter terrorism teams on request.   This is double the action of the old James Bond which I read so long ago.  I wonder why there have been no movies made of these Flynn novels, however they would not be near the delight held in the reading.   I found a lot of information about the author on the web/Wikipedia showed that he  lives  here in MN!  How have I missed this..."  best-selling American author of political thriller novels. He lives with his wife and three children in the Twin Cities. He is a frequent guest on the Glenn Beck news program on the Fox News Channel.  He also served as a story consultant for the fifth season of the 24 television series.  Flynn is a graduate of Saint Thomas Academy (1984) and the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) (1988). Post graduation, Flynn went to work for Kraft Foods as an account and sales marketing specialist. In 1990, he left Kraft to pursue a career as an aviator with the United States Marine Corps. One week before leaving for Officer Candidate School, he was medically disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program.  In an effort to overcome the difficulties of dyslexia, Flynn forced himself into a daily writing and reading regimen. Quotes Flynn: "I started reading everything I could get my hands on, Hemingway, Ludlum, Clancy, Tolkien, Vidal. I read fiction, nonfiction, anything, but I especially loved espionage."  His newfound interest in such novels motivated him to begin work on a novel of his own. While employed as a bartender in the St. Paul area, he completed his first book, Term Limits, which he then self-published.  "   Well no wonder it reminded me of Jack Bauer!  I will be supporting this local author whom I learned of from a CA friend!

My third and last book completed in January is "The Sea" by John Banville; a book I picked up at a sale because the cover called to me, the synopsis of the story sounded good and  the writing appeared exceptional.  I knew nothing about the book nor the author. This book was one I read in segments, often leaving it sit for weeks, although it was only 195 pages, short enough, yet it is so lyrical in  choice of writing and almost difficult to read.  Maybe it's because the author is Irish and used many words with which I was not familiar, but  which so intrigued me that I held a dictionary nearby.  Often the words were not in the American dictionary sending me to the Oxford Annotated. Words like revenant, leporine, strangury, proscenium, recreant, marmoreal, integuement and more.... Now that is not usually the way I like to read, but this book kept calling me back.  The story overall is melancholy, about  Max Morden, a widower, middle aged Irishman who returns to a seaside town where he spent summers as a child to quell his grief.  He reminisces about the Graces a wealthy family he met as a boy and a family through which he experiences his first love and encounters death for the first time.  At times reading this, I wondered why he persistently switched back and forth between then and now, but I kept on and was more than rewarded with the outcome and the surprise ending. 

Just a few select quotes, to give a taste for the writing:  Pg. 164  "Memory dislikes motion preferring to hold things still."    Pg. 47, "Claire snuffled and delving in a pocket brought out a handkerchief and stentorously blew her nose...It depends I said mildly on what you mean by suffering. "  Pg. 48, "  What is it about such people that makes me remember them?  His look was unctuous yet in some way minatory.  Perhaps I had been expected to tip him also, as I say: this world."    It is a book that I would not recommend to anyone for light reading, but it is the most beautifully written mystical book I have read in years.  It was a trip into reading wonderful literature, for which this author is  known.  I'd never had read nor known of this book if I did not browse book sales wherever I find them.