The Children's Blizzard

By David Laskin

Book Overview

"David Laskin deployshistorical fact of the finest grain to tell the story of a monstrous blizzardthat caught the settlers of the Great Plains utterly by surprise. . . . This is abook best read with a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060520760
• ISBN13: 9780060520762
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

A must for history and weather fans

Like Isaac's Storm (Erik Larson) before it, The Children's Blizzard takes us into a nearly forgotton place in American history and slaps us with the almost casual brutality of life before modern meteorology. David Laskin has researched the subject of the blizzard of 1888 in meticulous fashion and we can't help but be impressed with his scholarship. Laskin has previously written on meteorology and he has a way of making the capricious nature of the atmosphere highly accessible. Readers should be warned that Laskin is unsparing in his depiction of the death by exposure of children trapped in the storm. If you've read "To Build a Fire" by Jack London (whom he credits) you'll have a small idea of what these children go through. Images will haunt you: Parents dragging their frozen children into the house to thaw by the fire so their contorted bodies will fit into tiny coffins. Even those who survive must endure gruesome injuries. This is history and it must be told. But one wonders what ever made these settlers think such a life was worth the hardships. It was a rare family that had not lost children, even before the great blizzard. A minor criticism of The Children's Blizzard is its tendency, especially early, to focus on historical minutiae. Emphasis on the life of plains settlers before they left Europe drags down the early narrative. Recommended, but not for the easily disturbed reader.