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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.031
EAN: 9780060520762
ISBN: 0060520760
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: October 01, 2005
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: October 11, 2005
Studio: Harper Perennial

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:


Thousands of impoverished Northern European immigrants were promised that the prairie offered "land, freedom, and hope." The disastrous blizzard of 1888 revealed that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled, and America's heartland would never be the same.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.




Rating: - Moderately disappointing
Not that great. A rather typical format: describe the characters, try to add drama and tension by describing the cliched loss of children and immigration to a strange land, jumble about with time and place, do a weak job at describing the science and end with the tragedy and you've got this book. It was pretty formulaic.

I was interested in reading this because I wanted to know more about the winter described in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Hard Winter". I did learn that it was a different ... Read More

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Rating: - one of the best books I have ever read
This nonfiction account of a tragic event is an absorbing tale. The author delves into the social, political and economic factors which led to this tragedy with an interesting and informative style. He also makes the people involved seem real and one finds themself caring what happens next. This allows the reader to appreciate the reading experience at several levels. The Children's Blizzard, is one I have never regretted buying and have sent to others as a gift.

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Rating: - David Laskin's The Children's Blizzard
I read this book while researching the history of natural disasters and their impact on children. David Laskin tells the story of what has been called the School Children's Blizzard, where between 250 and 500 people--many children--perished in the snow and ice before they could find adequate shelter. The morning of January 12 had been rather mild across the plains of Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakota Territories. Then a storm came up without warning; a blinding sheet of whirling snow swept across the ... Read More

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Rating: - great for a book group
In 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 ... Read More

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Rating: - Makes You Shiver
Laskin's story chronicles a monster blizzard that devastated the Great Plains in January 1888 and left some 500 people -- mostly children trying to get home from school -- frozen dead on the prairie. After a slow start the book became fascinating to me. I could do without all the meteorological stuff or the too in-depth background, but the stories of the families, their struggles and their survival was riveting.

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