Summary of John M. Barry's Rising Tide

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Mississippi River is the largest river in the United States, and it flows through the heart of the country. It was the perfect task for the nineteenth century, as it required more than just confidence; it required hubris.
#2 Eads was not treated kindly in life, but he did not accept reverses. He learned first-hand the differences between honest dealing and sharp practice, and how a piece of information could make a man a fortune if he had the sophistication to understand it and the guts to risk it all for it.
#3 Eads had a passion for machinery and math. He built a six-foot-long working model of a steamboat complete with engines and boilers, a working model of a sawmill, and a working electrotype machine. He was 16 years old.
#4 Eads was a young man who had an idea to salvage sunken cargo ships. He walked into the St. Louis offices of boatbuilders Calvin Case and William Nelson, and asked them to build a ship and several diving bells for him, for free. In payment, he would make them partners in the salvage business.

Sujets

• United States
• 20th century

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 10 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669383796
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on John M. Barry's Rising Tide
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17 Insights from Chapter 18 Insights from Chapter 19 Insights from Chapter 20 Insights from Chapter 21 Insights from Chapter 22 Insights from Chapter 23 Insights from Chapter 24 Insights from Chapter 25 Insights from Chapter 26 Insights from Chapter 27 Insights from Chapter 28 Insights from Chapter 29 Insights from Chapter 30 Insights from Chapter 31 Insights from Chapter 32 Insights from Chapter 33 Insights from Chapter 34 Insights from Chapter 35 Insights from Chapter 36
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Mississippi River is the largest river in the United States, and it flows through the heart of the country. It was the perfect task for the nineteenth century, as it required more than just confidence; it required hubris.

#2

Eads was not treated kindly in life, but he did not accept reverses. He learned first-hand the differences between honest dealing and sharp practice, and how a piece of information could make a man a fortune if he had the sophistication to understand it and the guts to risk it all for it.

#3

Eads had a passion for machinery and math. He built a six-foot-long working model of a steamboat complete with engines and boilers, a working model of a sawmill, and a working electrotype machine. He was 16 years old.

#4

Eads was a young man who had an idea to salvage sunken cargo ships. He walked into the St. Louis offices of boatbuilders Calvin Case and William Nelson, and asked them to build a ship and several diving bells for him, for free. In payment, he would make them partners in the salvage business.

#5

Eads was a diver who salvaged ships and walked the bottom of the Mississippi River. He knew the river and its currents better than any other person. He was beginning to formulate theories about the river and its forces.

#6

Eads was a man of substance who had made a fortune on the river. He had married his widowed cousin, and they had no children together. He had become a founding director of the St. Louis Philharmonic Society. He was active in the St. Louis Merchants Exchange.

#7

Eads was a powerful man in Missouri, and he and a handful of others, including Edward Bates, Francis Preston Blair, Benjamin Gratz Brown, and James Rollins, met regularly to plot strategies to keep Missouri in the Union.

#8

Eads was extremely successful during the war, and his reputation grew. But the war also created opportunity for another man, who would later fight Eads for control of the Mississippi River.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Humphreys was born in 1810, the only child of a Philadelphia family of means and position. He entered West Point in 1829, and while he thrived there, life after graduation was a disappointment. He sought action, but found none in Army routine.

#2

Washington was a place of high-ranking titles and little accomplishment. The less he accomplished, the more important his titles became. He had twice had the opportunity to fight a war, against the Seminoles and in Mexico, but he had returned home ill both times.

#3

The Mississippi River was a huge problem for the states in the Mississippi valley. The states wanted the federal government to address the navigation and flood problems on the river, and in 1850, Congress authorized a survey of the lower Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf of Mexico.

#4

Until the 1830s, West Point dominated American engineering. But as the civilian profession developed through apprentice programs, the Army began to lose some of its top engineers.

#5

The Mississippi River is the longest river in the United States, and the second-longest river in the world. It flows through some of the flattest land in the world. The river’s characteristics represent an extraordinarily dynamic combination of turbulent effects.

#6

The Mississippi River is a constantly changing and moving river that can be unpredictable. It can be a deep pool one minute, and a crossing the next. The river’s sediment load is the final complexity to understand, as it can create even more unpredictability.

#7

The Mississippi River has two basic approaches to flood protection: levees, which confined the river, and outlets, which released it. Levees represented man’s power over nature; outlets represented man’s accommodation to nature.

#8

The levees-only theory argued that outlets, by allowing water to escape from the river, were counterproductive since they removed volume from the river, lowered the slope, and caused the current velocity to slow. This not only prevented the current from scouring out the bottom, but actually caused the deposit of sediment, which raised the flood height.

#9

The debate between Guglielmini and Ellet was not just about the Mississippi River, but about the entire country. Ellet and Humphreys, who was with him, would decide the issue.

#10

Humphreys was very careful and methodical when conducting his investigation, and he made sure to test and record all of the generally accepted theories. He found that outlets did not always carry more sediment than rivers moving at a slower velocity.

#11

After Ellet’s report was submitted, it became clear that it would set policy for the Mississippi River forever. Humphreys had become not just Ellet’s rival, but his enemy.
Insights from Chapter 3

#1

After the war began, Humphreys was not given combat responsibility. He focused on writing his report, which was his weapon. He had never been generous to rivals. He became ruthless.

#2

The report Humphreys wrote about the battle of Bull Run quickly won attention and praise in Europe. In the United States, both the Union Army and the southern states along the river had other priorities. But the war would eventually give Humphreys’ report the greatest imaginable weight.

#3

Humphreys was a very egotistical man, and he showed it throughout his career. He was very proud of the fact that he had more of the soldier than a man of science in him, and he preferred command of troops to being chief of staff.

#4

After the war, Humphreys’ report on the river was hailed throughout Europe. It was so influential because of its quality, and because of the position Humphreys had attained.

#5

The Delta Survey, led by Humphreys, found that the same laws govern the flow of water in the largest rivers and the smallest streams. They concluded that the old formulae did not even approximate those laws.

#6

After the war, Humphreys continued to reject the engineering hypothesis that underlay the levees-only idea. He continued to warn that the closing of natural outlets would be disastrous, yet he was still recommending that levees be used to contain the Mississippi River and its floods.

#7

After the war, Humphreys was given the task of inspecting the Mississippi River levees, and he recommended that the federal government spend several million dollars to rebuild them. Congress did not appropriate the money, but no southern senator would challenge him.
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