The Johnstown Flood
The Disaster Which Eclipsed History
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Narrated by:
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Felbrigg Napoleon Herriot
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By:
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Richard K Fox
About this listen
The Johnstown Flood of 1889 was a disaster of epic proportions. When the dam broke, the ensuing flood destroyed towns, washing away thousands of families and their homes and businesses. Trains were blasted from the tracks and buried, entire towns and the ground beneath them scoured clean and dark pits filled with human bodies.
It was a disaster that rocked the world. This narrative was written in the days immediately after the disaster and relates eyewitness accounts and amazing stories of survival as well as detailing the huge disaster relief work in the aftermath.
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Story
His father conceived of the Brooklyn Bridge, but after John Roebling's sudden death, Washington Roebling built what has become one of American's most iconic structures - as much a part of New York as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Yet, as recognizable as the bridge is, its builder is too often forgotten - and his life is of interest far beyond his chosen field. It is the story of immigrants, of the frontier, of the greatest crisis in American history, and of the making of the modern world.
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Monumental
- By charles mueller on 07-09-19
By: Erica Wagner
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The Storm of the Century
- Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Story of America's Deadliest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900
- By: Al Roker, William Hogeland
- Narrated by: Byron Wagner
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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On the afternoon of September 8, 1900, 200-mile-per-hour winds and 15-foot waves slammed into Galveston, the prosperous and growing port city on Texas' Gulf Coast. By dawn the next day, when the storm had passed, the city that had existed just hours before was gone. Shattered, grief-stricken survivors emerged to witness a level of destruction never before seen: 8,000 corpses littered the streets and were buried under the massive wreckage.
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Review of "The Storm of the Century "
- By S. Noe on 09-04-15
By: Al Roker, and others
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The Great Bridge
- The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 27 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This monumental book tells the enthralling story of one of the greatest accomplishments in our nation's history, the building of what was then the longest suspension bridge in the world. The Brooklyn Bridge rose out of the expansive era following the Civil War, when Americans believed all things were possible.
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An Historian and not a Novelist
- By Tim on 06-01-12
By: David McCullough
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Floodpath
- The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of 20th Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles
- By: Jon Wilkman
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Driven by eyewitness accounts and combining urban history with a life-and-death drama and a technological detective story, Floodpath grippingly reanimates the reality behind LA noir fictions like the classic film Chinatown. In an era of climate change, increasing demand on water resources, and a neglected American infrastructure, the tragedy of the St. Francis Dam has never been more relevant.
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Incredible story
- By C. Jackson on 04-07-21
By: Jon Wilkman
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The Galveston Hurricane of 1900
- The Deadliest Natural Disaster in American History
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Steve Rausch
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people. Prior to advanced communications, few people knew about impending hurricanes except those closest to the site. In the days before television or even radio, catastrophic descriptions were merely recorded on paper, limiting our understanding of the immediate impact. Thus it was inevitable that the category 4 hurricane would cause almost inconceivable destruction.
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The Hurricane
- By scott massey on 06-14-24
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The Big Burn
- Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.
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Mediocre
- By Mona on 11-04-20
By: Timothy Egan
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Wicked River
- The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild
- By: Lee Sandlin Jeff
- Narrated by: Jeff McCarthy
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed journalist and author Lee Sandlin delivers a riveting glimpse of a dangerous and colorful place in America’s historical landscape - the Mississippi River of the 19th century. Long before it was dredged into a shipping channel or romanticized into myth, the untamed Mississippi - the lifeblood of communities that rose and fell along its banks - spawned a motley array of pirates and dignitaries, visionaries, and thieves.
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Worth a listen
- By Robert B. Golson on 12-09-10
By: Lee Sandlin Jeff
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Under a Flaming Sky
- The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894
- By: Daniel James Brown
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Daniel James Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 1, 1894, two forest fires converged on the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, trapping over 2,000 people. Daniel J. Brown recounts the events surrounding the fire in the first and only book to chronicle the dramatic story that unfolded. Whereas Oregon's famous "Biscuit" fire in 2002 burned 350,000 acres in one week, the Hinckley fire did the same damage in five hours. The fire created its own weather, including hurricane-strength winds, bubbles of plasmalike glowing gas, and 200-foot-tall flames.
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History lovers dream book.
- By Lynn Fraser on 10-18-18
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Hiroshima
- By: John Hersey
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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A journalistic masterpiece. John Hersey transports us back to the streets of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 - the day the city was destroyed by the first atomic bomb. Told through the memories of six survivors, Hiroshima is a timeless, powerful classic that will awaken your heart and your compassion. In this new edition, Hersey returns to Hiroshima to find the survivors - and to tell their fates in an eloquent and moving final chapter.
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Hiroshima, the days and years that followed
- By Julia on 04-15-15
By: John Hersey
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The Race Underground
- Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway
- By: Doug Most
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and New York grew larger, the streets became increasingly clogged with horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of 1888 brought New York City to a halt, a solution had to be found. Two brothers - Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York City - pursued the dream of his city being the first American metropolis to have a subway and the great race was on.
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Informative Cobbled Telling of an Important Story
- By Lynn on 05-21-14
By: Doug Most
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Conquering Gotham
- The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels
- By: Jill Jonnes
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The demolition of Penn Station in 1963 destroyed not just a soaring neoclassical edifice, but also a building that commemorated one of the last century's great engineering feats: the construction of railroad tunnels into New York City. Now, in this gripping narrative, Jill Jonnes tells this fascinating story - a high-stakes drama that pitted the money and will of the nation's mightiest railroad against the corruption of Tammany Hall, the unruly forces of nature, and the machinations of labor agitators.
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A good tale of the times
- By Edouard on 02-08-08
By: Jill Jonnes