The Johnstown Flood is an iconic tragedy in our nation ́s history, like the Chicago Fire, the sinking of the Titanic or the San Francisco earthquake. Many books have been written about the devastating 1889 Johnstown Flood, but few about the period before or after the flood: why did the town develop in such a remote valley and why didn ́t those who livied below the dangerous dam do something about it? My book, "The Bosses Club", answers those questions, but more importantly illuminates often overlooked circumstances that contributed to the origin for the catastrophe, like the Pennsylvania Canal and Pennsylvania Railroad. How their rapid development set the stage and led to the rivaly between Cambria Iron Company and Carnegie to dominate the burgeoning Steel industry.

Introduction: Literature and the Political Problem 1. Since 1917: A Brief History Soviet Literature Persistence of the Past Fellow Travelers Proletarians The Stalinists Socialist Realism The Thaw The Sixties and Seventies 2. Mayakovsky and the Left Front of Art The Suicide Note Vladimir Mayakovsky, A Tragedy The Cloud "The Backbone Flute" The Commune and the Left Front The Bedbug and The Bath Mayakovsky as a Monument Poets of Different Camps 3. Prophets of a Brave New World The Machine and England Olesha's Critique of the Reason Envy and Rage 4. The Intellectuals, I Serapions Boris Pilnyak: Biology and History 5. The Intellectuals, II Isaac Babel: Horror in a Minor Key Konstantin Fedin: The Confrontation with Europe Leonov and Katayev Conclusion 6. The Proletarians, I The Proletcult The Blacksmith Poets Yury Libedinsky: Communists as Human Beings Tarasov-Rodionov: ,"Our Own Wives, Our Own Children" Dmitry Furmanov: An Earnest Commissar A. S. Serafimovich: A Popular Saga 7. The Proletarians, II Fyodor Gladkov: A Literary Autodidact Alexander Fadeyev: The Search for a New Leo Tolstoy Mikhail Sholokhov: The Don Cossacks A Scatter of Minor Deities Conclusion 8. The Critic Voronsky and the Pereval Group Criticism and the Study of Literature Voronsky Pereval 9. The Levers of Control under Stalin Resistance The Purge The Literary State 10. Zoshchenko and the Art of Satire 11. After Stalin: The First Two Thaws Pomerantsev, Panova, and The Guests Ilya Ehrenburg and Alexey Tolstoy The Second Thaw The Way of Pasternak 12. Into the Underground The Literary Parties The Trouble with Gosizdat End of a Thaw Buried Treasure: Platonov and Bulgakov The Exodus into Samizdat and Tamizdat Sinyavsky 13. Solzhenitsyn and the Epic of the Camps One Day The First Circle and The Cancer Ward The Gulag The Calf and the Oak: Dichtung and Wahrheit Other Contributions to the Epic 14. The Surface Channel, I: The Village 15. The Surface Channel, II: Variety of Theme and Style The City: Intelligentsia, Women, Workers The Backwoods: Ethical Problems Other New Voices of the Sixties and Seventies World War II Published Poets A Final Word on Socialist Realism 16. Exiles, Early and Late The Exile Experience "Young Prose" and What Became of It Religious Quest: Maximov and Ternovsky Truth through Obscenity: Yuz Aleshkovsky Transcendence and Tragedy: Erofeev's Trip Poetry of the Daft: Sasha Sokolov Perversion of Logic as Ideology: Alexander Zinoviev A Gathering of Writers Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index

From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory. Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live. A New York Times Notable Book A Los Angeles Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer Best Book of the Year Winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

A Christian Science Monitor Best Fiction Book of the Year A Guardian Best Book of the Year A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year The stunningly vibrant final novel in the bestselling Ibis Trilogy from Amitav Ghosh, Flood of Fire. It is 1839 and China has embargoed the trade of opium, yet too much is at stake in the lucrative business and the British Foreign Secretary has ordered the colonial government in India to assemble an expeditionary force for an attack to reinstate the trade. Among those consigned is Kesri Singh, a soldier in the army of the East India Company. He makes his way eastward on the Hind, a transport ship that will carry him from Bengal to Hong Kong. Along the way, many characters from the Ibis Trilogy come aboard, including Zachary Reid, a young American speculator in opium futures, and Shireen, the widow of an opium merchant whose mysterious death in China has compelled her to seek out his lost son. The Hind docks in Hong Kong just as war breaks out and opium is “pouring into the market like monsoon flood.” From Bombay to Calcutta, from naval engagements to the decks of a hospital ship, among embezzlement, profiteering, and espionage, Amitav Ghosh’s Flood of Fire charts a breathless course through the culminating moment of the British opium trade and vexed colonial history.

Science now reveals the true cause of the dam breach flood that destroyed Johnstown in 1889. The tragic loss of more than 2200 lives was preventable; the initial investigation of the flood was hijacked, delayed, and distorted by powerful members of the industrial elite. This book bridges the gap between history and science, reexamining eyewitness accounts of the flood and historic documents about the investigation, and applying new LiDAR, GPS, and hydraulic studies to solve the mystery – what caused the Great Flood of 1889? The book includes a notable chapter on the “sister” of the South Fork Dam, “The Forgotten Dam” at Hollidaysburg, PA.

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.

This edited volume was originally published in 2000 and presents a comprehensive, interdisciplinary review of issues related to inland flood hazards. It addresses physical controls on flooding, flood processes and effects, and responses to flooding, from the perspective of human, aquatic, and riparian communities. Individual chapter authors are recognized experts in their fields who draw on examples and case studies of inland flood hazards from around the world. This volume is unusual among treatments of flood hazards in that it addresses how the non-occurrence of floods, in association with flow regulation and other human manipulation of river systems, may create hazards for aquatic and riparian communities. This book will be a valuable resource for everyone associated with inland flood hazards: professionals in government and industry, and researchers and graduate students in civil engineering, geography, geology, hydrology, hydraulics, and ecology.