Free (ADE-DRM ePub) The Thousand-Year Flood [1937 Ohio Natural Disaster History]

[ATDrake]

The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937 by David Welky, an associate professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas, is his layperson-accessible comprehensive account of the titular natural disaster (Wikipedia), covering not only the story of what happened and how it affected the locals (which included several surrounding states, due to the extensiveness of the damage) and the nationwide disaster relief efforts which were mobilized, but also the seeds of the build-up to the disaster, with repeatedly ignored dangers in the decades prior, free courtesy of the University of Chicago Press.

This is their featured Free Ebook of the Month selection for January, and it looks very readable, with extensively-footnoted but flowing prose in an accessible narrative style.

Currently free throughout the month of January directly @ the university's dedicated promo page (ADE-DRM ePub available worldwide in exchange for your valid email address).

And this has been the (late!) selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Because it's always a pleasure to receive another one of the UCP's quality academic freebies as part of their generous ongoing program, and this looks like one that's a nice mixture of history and culture, with a touch of science in it, and a fairly topical one that perhaps one can learn things from (like not buying property on a known floodplain if one's finances can help it, or at least trying to put in reasonably effective safety measures).

Hopefully everyone caught up in the current round of US, UK, and other floods will make it out safe and sound.

Enjoy!

Description
In the early days of 1937, the Ohio River, swollen by heavy winter rains, began rising. And rising. And rising. By the time the waters crested, the Ohio and Mississippi had climbed to record heights. Nearly four hundred people had died, while a million more had run from their homes. The deluge caused more than half a billion dollars of damage at a time when the Great Depression still battered the nation.

Timed to coincide with the flood's seventy-fifth anniversary, The Thousand-Year Flood is the first comprehensive history of one of the most destructive disasters in American history. David Welky first shows how decades of settlement put Ohio valley farms and towns at risk and how politicians and planners repeatedly ignored the dangers. Then he tells the gripping story of the river's inexorable rise: residents fled to refugee camps and higher ground, towns imposed martial law, prisoners rioted, Red Cross nurses endured terrifying conditions, and FDR dispatched thousands of relief workers. In a landscape fraught with dangers—from unmoored gas tanks that became floating bombs to powerful currents of filthy floodwaters that swept away whole towns—people hastily raised sandbag barricades, piled into overloaded rowboats, and marveled at water that stretched as far as the eye could see. In the flood's aftermath, Welky explains, New Deal reformers, utopian dreamers, and hard-pressed locals restructured not only the flood-stricken valleys, but also the nation's relationship with its waterways, changes that continue to affect life along the rivers to this day.

A striking narrative of danger and adventure—and the mix of heroism and generosity, greed and pettiness that always accompany disaster—The Thousand-Year Flood breathes new life into a fascinating yet little-remembered American story.

[ATDrake]

Just a reminder that this will be the last day to pick up a copy of the freebie if you haven't already.