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The Children's Blizzard
Di David Laskin
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“David Laskin deploys historical fact of the finest grain to tell the story of a monstrous blizzard that caught the settlers of the Great Plains utterly by surprise. . . . This is a book best read with a fire roaring in the hearth and a blanket and box of tissues near at hand.” — Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City
“Heartbreaking. . . . This account of the 1888 blizzard reads like a thriller.” — Entertainment Weekly
The gripping true story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived settlers and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier.
January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent.
By the next morning, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.
With the storm as its dramatic, heartbreaking focal point, The Children's Blizzard captures this pivotal moment in American history by tracing the stories of five families who were forever changed that day. David Laskin has produced a masterful portrait of a tragic crucible in the settlement of the American heartland.
The P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereInformazioni sul libro
The Children's Blizzard
Di David Laskin
Descrizione
“David Laskin deploys historical fact of the finest grain to tell the story of a monstrous blizzard that caught the settlers of the Great Plains utterly by surprise. . . . This is a book best read with a fire roaring in the hearth and a blanket and box of tissues near at hand.” — Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City
“Heartbreaking. . . . This account of the 1888 blizzard reads like a thriller.” — Entertainment Weekly
The gripping true story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived settlers and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier.
January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent.
By the next morning, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.
With the storm as its dramatic, heartbreaking focal point, The Children's Blizzard captures this pivotal moment in American history by tracing the stories of five families who were forever changed that day. David Laskin has produced a masterful portrait of a tragic crucible in the settlement of the American heartland.
The P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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Recensioni
This is a powerful and well-written book. I recommend it!
Rating: 5
Just finished reading The Children's Blizzard. It's a story of how lack of meteorological information doomed many people to freeze during the 1888 blizzard across the Dakotas and Nebraska. I don't think I agree with the author's final assessment that settling the plains of the US was a "doomed experiment". That's far too simplistic a reason for the depopulation of the area. Someone needs to write about the advent of corporation farming that has driven the family farmers off the land. Still, I can recommend the book for the interesting meteorological information and the look at pioneer life at the end of the 1800s.
Rating: 3Given my unnatural obsession with the Laura Ingalls Wilder book, "Long Winter," it's not shocking that I enjoyed this book. (Well, as much as one can enjoy reading about frozen children.) I'll only reiterate what the other reviewers have said: there's a lot of boring crap about meteorology and the politics of the weather service. I skimmed over a lot of that; I got the gist of it, but that was enough for me.
Also, reading it on my Kindle, I was fairly shocked when I finished the book....at only 75% of the way through! The last quarter appears to be footnotes and the like. Surprising, and a bit disappointing.
Rating: 4Also, reading it on my Kindle, I was fairly shocked when I finished the book....at only 75% of the way through! The last quarter appears to be footnotes and the like. Surprising, and a bit disappointing.
As a child, I was obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. I read them each over again times beyond count, but my very favorite was The Long Winter. It accounted how Laura's family and the town of De Smet, South Dakota, struggled to survive a brutal winter of low food and fuel. A morbid book, to be sure--I guess it's no surprise that I've grown up to write post-apocalyptic tales of survival, and I still have a keen interest in historical tales of survival as well.As I began to read The Children's Blizzard, I wasn't surprised to find that Laskin was also inspired by Wilder's The Long Winter. Wilder's terrible winter was the one of 1880-1881; the titular blizzard of this book took place January 12th, 1888 and was truly a freak storm.The media stories a century ago often called the incident 'the School-Children's Blizzard,' because so many of the dead and maimed were children and teachers. They died in the grip of a suffocating, sub-zero storm, or froze to death in their school or home. Hundreds, across Nebraska and the Dakota Territory. Laskin takes a very thorough approach and begins by talking about these pioneers and where they were from: Norway or Germany, Mennonite or Quaker, they came west seeking a promised land of plenty. He focuses on several particular families, and in doing so, creates terrible tension because it's impossible to guess who will live or who will die. This is creative non-fiction at its finest. The science is a tad daunting as it describes the unique elements world-wide that come together to create such an unusually powerful storm--measurements state that the temperature dropped eighteen degrees in three minutes--and the manner that freezing kills the body; while the science is important, overall this is a tale of humanity, and that's the real story here.I am most definitely keeping this book on my shelf and will be referring to it for years to come.
Rating: 5From Sebastien Junger's recounting of the fateful events surrounding the Andrea Gail in October of 1991 to the terrible havoc from the recent tornadoes in Texas, the power and destruction of storms has always been strangely intriguing. Maybe it's because we know next to nothing about how to control them or how to accurately predict them, and that fear of the unpredictable drives us to try to understand them. Nowadays, we have radar and weather balloons and computers that assist with figuring out what makes those powerful storms tick, and even then, we still are faced with a so much uncertainty about them.In "The Children's Blizzard
Rating: 4I’ve always thought I would have been a terrible pioneer. I’m not physically tough. I’m highly myopic – without glasses, I can’t find my glasses. I love air conditioning, hot showers and cozy fires. The Children’s Blizzard tells in agonizing detail about the lives of the hardy immigrants who settled in what was then The Northwest. Life was tough enough before the storm hit. But when a “January thaw” day appeared, only to be ended suddenly by a severe and massive blizzard, the results were heartbreaking. The Children’s Blizzard is a tragic story, no doubt, but one that’s well worth reading. The Children’s Blizzard occurred January 12, 1888 in the Dakota Territory, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa. Although the definitive number of victims that succumbed to the storm has never been tallied, estimates are between 200 and 500, many of them schoolchildren on their way home. And the blizzard made world-wide heroes and heroines of schoolteachers who saved the lives of their young charges.The author does a masterful job of laying the groundwork – telling the stories of individual immigrant families based on their journals, and detailing the politics and personalities of the weather-forecasting system then in place. He also includes a short chapter and subsequent sections on the science of storms. This book will appeal to anyone who likes history, especially genealogists and family historians. It’s about as close as we can get to time-travel. If all history were written by David Laskin, everyone would LOVE history.
Rating: 5The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin is a fascinating book about a powerful, freak blizzard that occurred in the upper Midwest of America on January 12, 1888. I found this an extremely moving, well researched book that caught and held my attention from cover to cover.The author follows a few families that settled in this area that encompassed the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota. Giving us the history and background of these families made what they endured through this blizzard all the more touching. Striking quickly and deadly, the blizzard became known as the Children’s Blizzard as so many school children were caught up in it. Either being stranded at school with their teachers or being sent out to find their way home. What happened to these children is both heart rending and, at times, miraculous.Details on the scientific background of weather forecasting is given in simple terms which I found readable and helped to move the story forward. I was surprised at the knowledge that they did have in the 1880’s, but with a storm that approached so rapidly and was so severe, there really appeared to be little the Weather Bureau could do. Of course, that didn’t appear to stop a certain amount of fact spinning in the days immediately after this tragedy.An interesting book that once more gives proof that nature should always be respected and when dealing with weather, it’s better to err on the side of caution.
Rating: 4"Chance is always a silent partner in disaster. Bad luck, bad timing, the wrong choice at a crucial moment, and the door is inexorably shut and barred. The tragedy of the Jan. 12 blizzard was that the bad timing extended across a region and cut through the shared experiences of an entire population." (Page 2)David Laskin goes on to show exactly what he means by that statement as he explains the failures on the part of the US Army and their Signal Corps, who were charged with forecasting the weather, particularly cold waves; the teachers, who released their students to walk home, sometimes miles away, when the better option would have been to hunker down in the school house; and the Eastern and Northern European immigrants themselves, who settled in the Great Plains without realizing how very hard life in this location would be.Thoroughly researched, this heartbreaking book is full of vignettes describing the immigrant families and how the blizzard effected them. Sadly, on that January 1888 day,that dawned warmer than in months, children left behind their heavy coats and headed off to school. But by mid-day, as the temperature plummeted, the blizzard set in and those same children tried to get home across the frozen prairie. What a monumental task when it was impossible to see your hand in front of your face and in a matter of minutes your eyelids were frozen shut.Laskin gave me a new appreciation for the hardships that are part and parcel of life on the prairie, as well as specific information about this deadly day in our history. Highly recommended.
Rating: 4Themes: weather, adversity, family, faith, scienceSetting: January 1888, Dakota territory, Iowa, Minnesota, and NebraskaJanuary on the prairie is never exactly balmy. The weather had been very cold all month. Then it warmed up for a while - not a lot, but enough that people seized the chance to get outside and tend to a few neglected chores, repairing the roof, feeding the livestock, bringing in more fuel for the fire, and sending the kids to school. All of which put them into danger.Weathermen today love to talk about the "warm before the storm," and this was a classic example. The storm hit with incredible power, bringing punishing winds and very fine, stinging snow that covered everything outside in minutes. Those folks caught away from home were in big trouble. And many of them were the school children.Laskin seems to have done his research on this one. The stories of the children were amazing and often heartbreaking. That part was very good. But what I didn't enjoy as much was the story of the Signal Corps and the effort place blame for the number of deaths caused by the storm. It was a blizzard. The blizzard was to blame.Seriously, it's hard to see how things could have ended any differently. It was 1888. There were no satellite weather imaging thingies. There wasn't even reliable radio. The weather stations themselves weren't even equipped with telegraph lines liking them up to each other. And if there were, how were they supposed to broadcast their weather forecasts? Forecasting then was even more a matter of absolute luck and guesswork. But there was no way to make them public anyway. They had some sort of flags and alerts they issued, I wasn't quite clear on that, but no one in the little prairie towns could have known about them. It wasn't like they put them in the newspaper or on the radio.I felt that this technical part took too much focus away from the part that I really found good, which was about the storm itself and how people managed to survive or didn't. This other bit about the science of it all was just a distraction. I wound up skipping most of that. Still, it was a good book and I would recommend it. It's just that compared to The Worst Hard Time, I knew that it could have been much better. 3.5 stars
Rating: 4"Well . . . I really, really, really wanted to like this book. Almost all of the reviews were great and the subject matter appealed to me. Unfortunately, I had to force myself to finish it. I kept thinking it would get better. At least 1/3 of the book is a science/meteorology lesson outlining how/why storms like this occur (B-O-R-I-N-G), while another sizeable chunk was explaining the biology and phenemena of freezing to death/hypothermia. The smallest part of the book (the part I was most interested in) was devoted to the families and their stories of this horrible storm. I realize there may not be much written history about this (given the tragedy of the situation and the time period - 1888), but this book really left me wanting more. A disappointment
Rating: 2Laskin's approach to telling this story is apparently motivated by his political views that too many Europeans were enticed to homestead on free land and that they came to America unprepared for life on the prairie. Interspersed within his excellent storytelling of this dramatic and devastating storm, Laskin suggests that taking over the grassland from the indigenous peoples only harmed the environment, not to mention an entire race. Does the name Laskin sound native American to you? Perhaps Mr. Laskin feels that only his forefathers were permitted to come to America? I doubt that the Russian Germans who came to escape the Czar's brutality and military enscriptions felt that they had made a bad choice. Generally, the pioneers that I have read about were more than grateful for what they had and were willing to encounter hardships along the way. Aside from the political commentary, this story was well researched and the parts about the storm itself and the people it affected were spell-binding and gripping. Another epic Great Plains pioneer story of the human will for survival and our ability to overcome difficult challenges
Rating: 4The story of one of the worst blizzards to ever hit the the Western Plains in January 1888. The author does a very good job of introducing the individuals involved as well as the technology and politics that contributed to the human side of the disaster as well as explaining the physical forces behind the weather patterns that created the deadly storm. The only draw back for me was the lack of visual aides, maps and photographs, etc. Those always enhance a story for me. But all in all, a very good book. It read like a good novel, but never let you forget that you were hearing the stories of real people some who survived and some who didn't.
Rating: 4Brutal true story of a blizzard that swept the plains in the 1870's, killing many people. Tragically this included children on their way home from school.
Rating: 3This is a history of the January 12, 1888 blizzard that devastated families and farms in the Dakota territories. It is also so much more.The story begins by detailing the journey of the immigrants from Norway, Germany and Eastern Europe. They were lured by the promise of free land perfect for farming. They suffer many challenges, including insects and weather. The author also includes several detailed sections describing weather patterns in the central part of North America, and the conditions which brought about the "perfect storm". Of course, if you've read the [Little House on the Prairie] series, specifically, [The Long Winter], you will recognize many of the towns and the stories of grasshoppers and sudden terrible storms.The stories are heartbreaking and the stoicism of the pioneers is truly amazing.
Rating: 4“We have been calling every storm a blizzard,” the Reverend S. F. Huntley wrote to a friend in New York, “but then [after January 12] decided that we had never had a blizzard before and never wanted one again.”‘The School Children’s Blizzard’, as it came to be known, swept across the American Midwest on January 12 1888, the worst storm of it’s kind to afflict the prairie lands since the settlers arrived there from Norway, Denmark, and Germany. Dakota and Nebraska in particular were caught in a perfect storm of bad timing, poverty, convergences of air pressure and temperatures whose results moved with bullet-train swiftness, and the residual hope of the immigrants who had been lured here by promises of ‘garden land’. When the morning seemed to herald a week-long thaw, not unheard of in January, prairie-dwellers took advantage of the lull to send their children to school, or to work on their farms, or to let the livestock out onto the pastures. Many of them were without heavy winter coats, or hats. This mistake cost more than 100 children their lives, and heralded the end of the first mass influx onto the Great Plains. Life here was no garden.While Laskin’s text needs no diagrams or visual aids, the inclusion of one or two might have enriched it even further. That’s a mild complaint, though; Laskin’s delivery of the physics behind the blizzard is accessible and well integrated into the anecdotal feel of the book.The conditions that Laskin describes in harrowing, meticulous detail are almost impossible to summarise in review, but the 1888 blizzard makes for gripping retelling, and Laskin builds the story and moves it along at a pace that brings the reader into jeopardy along with the sons and daughters of farmhands across the flat, empty land, wide-eyed with fear as they try to strike out for home or turn back for some known shelter as the storm arrives ‘in a moment’. The wealth of hard research (sufficient to warrant a chapter-thick addition at the end of the book entitled ‘sources’, which is interesting in itself), of meteorological data, immigration, family histories of the settlers; even the bureaucratic failings of the bodies in charge of weather forecasting only add to the tension… this is a proper history, one that revolves around the human struggle, the individual tragedies and sometimes miraculous saves of that day.
Rating: 4The Children's Blizzard is a documentary about a particularly disastrous blizzard in 1888 in the Dakota Territory that blew in without warning, trapping many people outside. The beginning of the book is a little slow. About the first 100 pages is an introduction. However, when the storm arrives, the story becomes quite interesting. I also found that all of my questions about anything in the book were quickly answered in the following paragraphs. Many parts of the book shocked me. Overall I enjoyed reading this book, but I do not recommend reading it during the winter.
Rating: 4The next time you or your kids think life is a bit hard, pick up this book. Mr Laskins not only describes the meteorological events which contributed to this deadly storm's formation, he incorporates the human events that brought the victims of the tragedy to the Dakota prairies in the first place and the hardships they endured to eek out a living. While many modern day Americans have the luxury of expectating FEMA, the Red Cross, the National Guard or some other agency to show up to help them in times of crisis, the immigrants that settled the territories during the 1800's often had no one to rely on but themselves. Given the nature of the subject matter, I thought 'Blizzard' would be a bit more maudlin, but I was mistaken. Yes, it is a snapshot of a harrowing catastrophe that left scores of people dead and permanently scarred, yet it also contains inspiring accounts of heroism, educational segments about the formation and direction of severe weather patterns and some simple strokes of "luck." In addition, military history buffs should find much to appreciate in Laskin's research of the Signal Corps and its players plus the politics surrounding the organization itself. If you've ever questioned the need for mandatory disaster preparedness training for young teachers--before they are charged with leading a classroom--this is a must read. Even if you haven't, I definitely recommend it.
Rating: 4An easy, pop barnstormer of a read reminiscent of Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time" (though not as masterful) and Erik Larson's "Isaac's Storm."Laskin is a careful narrator and the story is a naturally interesting one. It's not hard to build compelling pathos in the plight of so many brave pioneers facing down the wrath of nature. Laskin's explorations of the nascent science of meteorology can sometimes wax enthusiastically long-winded, but you'll likely find that the bulk of this book slips away easily. You may even feel guilty at how enjoyable it is.
Rating: 4Dramatic telling of a sudden and ferocious blizzard that swept through Montana, the Dakotas, and Nebraska one day in 1888, and the people who faced it. The human stories -- immigrant families, schoolmarms, and more -- are richly textured and hence all the more touching.
Rating: 5A fascinating, meticulously researched account of the 19th century blizzard that devastated parts of the Great Plains. David Laskin digs deep to unearth the economic, political, and scientific conditions leading up to the storm, explaining in great detail the meteorological causes of such a blizzard, what happens to a body as the effects of hypothermia take hold, and why people were settled into this wild frontier in the first place. A fascinating, devastating read filled with personal tragedies and triumphs of those who lived--or died--through the ordeal. My one gripe: Some of the passages describing in intricate detail the weather conditions that birthed such a storm read like a textbook and were generally boring and too long.
Rating: 4In January of 1888, a terrible blizzard, which came to be known as the "Schoolchildren’s Blizzard" blew in across the Nebraska & Dakota Territory prairie. It was so-called because the deaths from the blizzard were largely of children who left school because of the bad weather coming. Sadly, they left "at the moment when the wind shifted and the sky exploded (2)." Using a wide variety of sources, Laskin has put together this account of that fateful day, but the book is much more than just a retelling of the event. He also details other immigrants' experiences such as tough crossings, and the often difficult life once they reached the Dakota territory. Laskin also discusses the state of weather forecasting at the time, and asks some pretty pointed questions about the issue of fault during the course of a natural disaster. I think a lot of people would also agree that the book is a definite statement on the power of nature and the horror it can inflict when people are unprepared (not that people can always be prepared for natural disasters). I'd definitely recommend this to people who like history in focused, short bursts (like this book or along the lines of something like Isaac's Storm) rather than out of texts. The only part where it even felt a bit boggy was the discussion on the history of weather forecasting, but that didn't really detract from my reading. If you're also interested in life on the plains, this is a good one to read as well. Very well written -- I couldn't stop reading it once I started.
Rating: 4remarkable research. very well written. LOVED IT!!!
Rating: 4Gripping tale of true horror. Just goes to show you the carnage that can result from ignorance and government budgeting decisions. With some merciless weather thrown it. Cool.
Rating: 4Carry this book with you. if you ever hear someone complain about how hectic life is smack them over the head with it. Life was unpredictable and brutal in the Dakotas in the 1880s, much more than say having two soccer practices scheduled on the same day. I like history, but reading about a killer blizzard with children freezing to death walking home from prairie schools seemed a bit much. I bought it anyway. Some parts as expected were sad and depressing, on the other hand some parts were uplifting. Well written book that really shows how difficult life used to be.
Rating: 5Great popular history. This account of the sudden and devastating 1880s "school children's blizzard" unfolds like a suspense novel.
Rating: 5Laskin uses a deadly ninetieth-century storm that took the Great Plains by surprise to tell the story of homestead life and the weather forecasting methods of the era, and how neither of them were very successful.It seems clear that Laskin had more access to the history of early meteorology (at that time, it was done by the US Army) than he did to the history of poor immigrant homesteaders. Laskin sets up some personal stories early and briefly updates them throughout the book, filling in the sizable gaps with scientific details on weather patterns and their highs and lows (until your eyes glaze over) and the gory details on how the body reacts to extreme cold. He also spend quite a bit of time on the bureaucratic missteps that occurred in setting up and running the pioneer weather stations.While Laskin seems to want badly to bring this scientific event down to a personal level, the families stories are never compelling enough to truly care about its victims nor varied enough to follow them from start to finish. So much of the book is centered around so few stories that it's easy to come away thinking that there were only a handful of victims, instead of the hundreds there actually were. This lack of pioneer family history might not be all Laskin's fault, but it does prevent him from delivering the affecting story the book shoots for.
Rating: 2This book is a really imformative account of the "childrens blizzard" that devasted the great plains. The blizzard hit right when children were getting out of school, so many died or were injured as they got caught, and stuck in the weather. Includes very detailed descriptions of what happens to the body as we go into hypothermia. Also very detailed descriptions of the weather systems in the midwest, and how they moved across the prairie to create such a deadly blizzard.
Rating: 4Very slow to start, but once people starting dying, the pace really picked up. An interesting view of pioneer life. Makes one wonder why people continued to live in this region!
Rating: 3This book gets a little heavy with weather terminology in a couple of chapters. The author also weaves MANY stories of various immigrants lives throughout the book...don't try to keep them straight. Just read the book. The story is fascinating.
Rating: 4Protagonist: thousands of settlers who knew nothing about winter on the Great PlainsSetting: the Great Plains of the US, 1880sA detailed account of a blizzard that swept down out of Canada on January 12, 1888 and brought everything to a screeching halt on the Great Plains. Hardest hit was present-day South Dakota, western Minnesota and Nebraska. It was called the "Children's Blizzard" because most of the fatalities were children coming home from school. This book is very uneven. The weak points are mind-numbing descriptions of weather and the effects of frostbite. The strength lies with the people who survived the blizzard and wrote down their experiences.
Rating: 4