The Children's Blizzard (p.S.) [Paperback]

“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. Using the storm as a lens, Laskin captures the brutal, heartbreaking folly of this chapter in America’s history, and along the way delves into the freakish physics of extreme cold. 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 ofThe Devil in the White City

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.

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.“Laskin captures the brutal, heartbreaking folly of this chapter in America’s history.”“An adroit, sensitive drama and a skillful addition to a popular genre. . . . A perceptive presentation, evoking lives unnoticed by history but for the tragedy of this storm.”“A gripping chronicle of meteorological chance and human folly and error. . . . Novelistic [and] consistently affecting. . . . A rewarding read.lÓ)