The Children's Blizzard

A great book! As one who has lived some years on the plains, the Great American Desert,as it was called in the nineteenth century, I have come to know how severe the weather here can be, how changeable, and on occasion, how fatal. But this is not simply a book about weather on the plains. It is a book about the American immigrant experience, about perseverence and overcoming obstacles that would daunt the bravest soul. It is the story first of people leaving everything behind in Europe for the promise of free land in America in the nineteenth century. These were families who left farms and families and traditions and all that they had known in order to travel thousands of miles and try to make it in one of the harshest places on earth, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Montana. Their toils are enormous, and Laskin does a good job of describing just how enormous they were. In an area clearly not suitable for agriculture they painstakingly cleared the sod, built houses with it, tried to hang on until a crop could be planted and harvested, and were very hard up against it for years. And then there is the storm of 1888. In a freakish event, the weather in January of that year suddenly gave promise of an early spring. On the day of the storm the little ones went off to school wearing spring clothes, many with no coats. Then by midday the temperature dropped like a stone, and that event was quickly followed by a horrendous blizzard so thick with ice crystals that nothing was visible for more than a few feet. Teachers debated holding the little ones in the school until help came or letting them go home on their own. Some teachers tried to accompany the students. Some let them go. In case after case the little ones were quickly disoriented and soon froze to death. It was as awful and as simple as that. Laskin describes hyperthermia and frostbite, and shows why these can be fatal. He does his best to show how and why this storm was such a surprise, and therefore so fatal, to those who endured it. He drives the miles (and miles...and miles) across the prairie where the events occurred to interview the descendants of the families who suffered it all. Many still live in the region. In the end, it's difficult to cast much blame in any direction, though many tried to do so. This is a great read. If I were teaching a course on the Great Plains I would include this as required reading along with Ian Frazier, Mari Sandoz, Ken Haruf, and Jim Henderson. It is a window on the prairie and on an America now gone, and well worth the tale.

This fascinating and tragic account of the nineteenth-century blizzard that killed scores of people is rich with personal, political and scientific detail that placed the storm in the context of America's push to settle its frontier. Laskin traces the fate of several families induced by the Homestead Act to travel to the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa from their native European and Ukranian homelands, to establish new farms in the harsh environment of the Plains states. Focusing on their children - caught by the blizzard on the way home from school - made the story all the more poignant. The best parts of the book focused on the personal stories of these families, how they were caught in the storm, and affected in its aftermath. One schoolteacher braved the storm after (possibly) tying schoolchildren together and all survived. Another lost more than half of his class trying to travel less than a quarter mile to safety. However, Laskin pulled too many people into the narrative, which made their stories difficult to follow at times. Likewise, the evolution and fate of Army Signal Corp. officers who failed to predict the storm, while interesting, was cluttered with too many backstories, that seemed to bear little or no relationship to the tragedy unfolding in the Plains. Some of the most fascinating passages just talked about the weather. Laskin made dry meteorological details equal parts magical and terrifying as seen through the recollections of nineteenth century pioneers. "The air popped and sizzled when a hand was passed over someone's head," because the violent storm generated so much static electricity. p. 176. One man found that "when his fingers snapped [] fire came from them," and another watched "sparks of electricity leap from the gilt molding used for hanging pictures." p.176-177. Likewise, reports of powdered snow, pulverized by the storm, suffocating and blinding people as it clogged airways and sealed frozen eyelids together, made it easier to understand how tough pioneers became lost and frozen a hundred feet from safety. At times, though, the meteorological details weighed down the narrative. An early passage describing how cold and warm fronts converge, and speculating on the impact of Rocky Mountain topography on storm development, was mind-numbing. Though the author valiantly tried to rescue the description with thoughtful metaphors, those fragments of understanding seemed randomly cobbled together. Pictures - perhaps extracts from historical meteorological maps (referred to in the text, but unseen by the reader) - would have been a welcome shortcut. While these few dense passages lack the finesse of more polished works (such as Isaac's Storm), persistence is well-rewarded by the overall story. Finally, in the aftermath of the storm, Laskin's reflection that the "140-year-old scheme" to settle the Plains "has failed at the cost of trillions of dollars, countless lives and immeasurable heartbreak," was food for thought. In sum, though slow at times, Laskin's account of the "Childrens' Blizzard" was often insightful and evocative, and I highly recommend the book.

Having lived in North Dakota for some time, it is easy to relate to this fascinating book, it is not only about "the childrens blizzard", which in some circles is quite well known, it is about weather, geography, history, families etc. It covers so very much in its 290 some pages.It is, to me, one of, if not the best book I've ever read or have read in a very long time,it is sometimes hard for me to read books like this, cause I miss my Dakota, and because there are very real tragedies that happened here with this storm of 1888,the big snow, or whatever.I left there for economic reasons, and to this day miss it, but it is also a great pleasure to read this and other books like this because it kind of gives you a sense of being there, and being involved in it all,and, shall we say, being a little closer to home. Anyway, David Laskin has got himself an exceptional book here, and I would give it much much more than 5 stars,yes, there is a little bit of jumping around with families and names involved in what happened, but it does not cause a problem with the book,this is all expertly written, and for weather buffs, like me, the important storm information is given.It's one of those books that you can't put down, and you want even more once your done reading it.

If one likes history, this is a good book. If one is from or now lives in Nebraska, this is a good book. I have a relative, on a linear line, i.e. he was the nephew of my great-great grandfather, who died in 1888 in the blizzard. He died from something that no one knew about, and we did not know why he died. I am not going to tell what it is, but doctors now know what to do about people who get VERY cold, and what happens to the body after being rescued, or in Omar's case, just got up to go find help. The book gave the extent of the blizzard which really was a huge affair from Minnesota to Nebraska with Nebraska taking the full brunt of it. In thinking about this young man as well as the continued story of the young woman who spent the night with him in a snowdrift, and her long recuperation, I always wonder if the school teacher ought to have kept the children in the building and not released them to go home. He had no radio to give weather reports, so it is unfair to blame him, but one wants to find fault somewhere because of the horrific death of Omar Gibson and others. I also wonder why they did not bring the horse near them and stay very close to his warm body? I would have thought that they, as county children, could have made him sit or lie down, although I am not a farmer so maybe they could not have done this. I think that they would have survived had they done this. I would have thought that this would have been well-known survival information on the Nebraska plains of the 1880s. The horse didn't make it either, but maybe his body warmth could have kept them alive. I am grateful to people who take the time to research this sort of incident and then to write a book that young people and all readers will enjoy. This blizzard and its effects on Nebraska residents is well documented in Nebraska history books. It is good to have a 21st Century Point of View looking at it.

Over the course of thousands of years, the Tribes of Native Americans ("Indians") became intimately acquainted with the rhythms and cycles of the Vast Plains upon which they dwelt, and, aside from their Bison hunting grounds, they knew the tracts of land, of spaces that were dangerous to establish day-to-day, all-year-round villages. They knew where the could set up their tipis, in places where fuels for wildfires were sparser; where watertables were closer to the surface, in case of droughts; where they were spared the heavier gusts of windage, for both Summers and Winters; and, where the buildups of the terrible mesocyclone Supercells were less likely to drop their lethal fingers and Derecho Bands, from the skies. Not quite so, for the over-civilized peoples that immigrated from Europe, including those who had already become Americans. Indeed, it was their unwise manipulations of the land, that triggered the Great Dustbowl throughout and a little beyond the Great Depression. It's nothing short of a big fluke, that respectable-sized metropolises such as Lincoln, Omaha, Sioux City, Rapid City, Bismarck, Fargo, and others, were able to get a foothold, and help support their outlying farm and ranch lands. While the later waves of immigration in the Nineteenth Century were bids to escape oppressive cultural, social, and political conditions, these people largely came from lands where the natural environment was relatively calm and, even possibly more productive, in selected sites. And the Americans who were already here for hundreds of years, chose to vacate the relative safety and comfort of their lands east of the Mississippi Watersheds. None of these "greenhorns" had ANY idea of what their activities would do to the land, of what awaited them, past the relative sheltering of Eastern Forests and Woodlands. Laskin's treatment of the subject matter at hand, most vividly executed, surely ranks up there, with the other maestros of documentary non-fiction, such as Daniel Joseph Brown, George R. Stewart, Erik Larsen, and others. He brings you to truly care for the real-life people that he populates his pages with. One can truly experience the excruciating and unrelenting pain that these REAL-LIFE people endured, as if Laskin squarely inserted yourselves, to their skins. The practice of imposing extra-curricular disciplines (Meteorology) upon a Military Body, clearly was a mistake, except for Stellar Navigation and Astronomy Disciplines ESSENTIAL to Navies, to place their Fleets on Position, for Combat and Routine Patrol activity. Woodruff's interpersonal political struggles (as fine a person belonging to the better segments of humanity that could be found then, in the late Nineteenth century) distracted him, and other Soldiers, from the Fine Arts and Sciences of Military Endeavor. The best context of the use of Meteorology in Warfare was probably exemplified by General Eisenhower's use of J. M. Stagg, a crack Meteorologist educated in a CIVILIAN manner, for putting the Overlord Invasion on Station. Aside from this, and the use of Meteorologist Officers, to best determine optimum airplane sorties from Aircraft Carriers, delving into distracting disciplines and other endeavors, is at CROSS-PURPOSES, to what Militaries ideally are Tasked to do. Greely's narrow-focus martinet actions in his Arctic Expedition(s), as much as anything, were contributions to the disasters that occurred there, his insistence of subjecting some civilian members to military protocols for which they were otherwise unfit for. To me, Laskin clearly illustrates this. Contrast that, with Shackleton's astutely charismatic leadership of a MAINLY civilian force in the famous 1915-17 Antarctic Marooning. He got all of his men out, ALIVE. I would love to see how Mr. Laskin might treat such relatively modern weather disasters, such as the huge Tri-State Tornado of 1925; the staggeringly massive El Reno Tornado; and-or the Great Eastern Iowa Derecho of a couple years ago. I am glad that he made discussion here, of that other terrible blizzard of '88, that struck the Northeast Coast. Finally, could you imagine what it would be like, for this Children's Blizzard, to happen today, to happen now, in much the same places? It could very well lethal, for motorists to venture for any distance upon our freeways, even with chains and snow tires. People would at least need the mindsets of Alaskans and Yukonites, to survive. Laskin's description of the snow and ice particles, their concentration and intensity, might make it dangerous for today's airplanes, to ingest this stuff into their jet engines, as surely as "Cap'n Sully's" flock of geese.

Needs some editorial assistance. Overall great book. A 4 is a very fair review. I have thousands of hours of reading experience.

I don’t know a lot about the Upper Plains, although I’m aware of the immigration from Northern Europe and the challenging weather in the Dakota territories. The information about the effects of severe cold on the human body was awful but not surprising. All in all, a very interesting book.

As I write this, the first cold blast of the season is affecting half the U.S. I knew it was coming a week ago. The story told in The Children's Blizzard is about an even more devasting cold blast and blizzard that rushed across the upper U.S. in 1888 with little warning and the loss of life that it caused. While the devasting blizzard of January 12, 1888, is at the center of this story, the book touches on several other topics: weather forecasting before satelites, life on the great plains in the early 19th century, and weather science. The author doesn't discuss climate change, but it was on my mind as I read about record snowfalls and sub-zero temperatures. We still get plenty of snow and cold temperatures, but these events are not nearly as severe as in the past. To say that these early settlers had a hard time is an understatement. Cheap land and farming was the promise that lured thousands of people from the safe confines of the big cities to the unknown open plains. That rosy picture didn't last long. Farmers faced three significant hurdles in bringing their crops to market: fires that swept across the land, drought and early cold spells, and insect damage. As for the blizzard of 1888, it was just one of many that ended in death for both people and livestock. What made this particular blizzard noteworthy was the number of school children that died. The day started sunny and warmer than previous days and weeks. Many school-age children headed off to school for the first time in weeks. The cold, wind, and snow came unexpectedly. Teachers had to decide whether it was better to release the children out into the storm or ride it out in a wood-frame schoolhouse with limited heating. The author recounts numerous stories of what happened to those teachers and children as they tried to find shelter from the storm. Most of those caught in the blizzard were ill-prepared. They were under-dressed. Limited visibility made it difficult to find familiar landmarks. Many of those that died were found later only feet from safety. Those that did survive the night suffered from severe frostbite. In the end, some 250 people lost their lives.

A really good read. A big part of what ppl remember from history. I was astonished at how fast this storm took over.

A fascinating book. It not only tells the story of this dreadful blizzard but how the people arrived on the plains of America. The writing is in an easy style, very readable.

Fascinating. Good balance of facts and fictionalised interpretations of what happened.

Lovely book