The Children's Blizzard

This was certainly an interesting, although obviously greatly depressing, book. Many other reviewers have commented on the immigrants' backgrounds, tough conditions, poor quality of weather prediction, and other themes in the book. The thing that stuck in my mind months after finishing it, however, was a few lines at the very end of the book: “...it's beginning to look like European agricultural settlement is a completed chapter of history.” “Indian and buffalo populations have now reached levels that the region has not seen since the 1870s.” The settlement of the Great Plains may have been one of America's greatest mistakes, and this 1888 blizzard was the first sign.