Books like The Children's Blizzard (P.S.) by David Laskin

After relocating to a Dakota farm, John Hale must use his resilience to survive the deadly January 1888 blizzard that claimed the lives of many children, a tragic event that shaped frontier history.

Praise for Blood and Thunder"Kit Carson's role in the conquest of the Navajo during and after the Civil War remains one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of the American West. Hampton Sides portrays Carson in the larger context of the conquest of the entire West, including his frequent and often lethal encounters with hostile Native Americans. Unusually, Sides gives full voice to Indian leaders themselves about their trials and tribulations in their dealings with the whites. Here is a national hero on the level of Daniel Boone, presented with all of his flaws and virtues, in the context of American people's belief that it was their Manifest Destiny to occupy the entire West."--Howard Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University and editor of The New Encyclopedia of the American West"The story of the American West has seldom been told with such intimacy and immediacy. Legendary figures like Kit Carson leap to life and history moves at a pulse-pounding pace--sweeping the reader along with it. Hampton Sides is a terrific storyteller."--Candice Millard, author of The River of Doubt"Hampton Sides doesn't just write a book, he transports the reader to another time and place. With his keen sense of drama and his crackling writing style, this master storyteller has bequeathed us a majestic history of the Old West."--James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys"Blood and Thunder is a big-hearted book whose subject is as expansive as they come. Hampton Sides tackles it with naked pleasure and narrative cunning: In his telling, the vast saga of America's westward push has a logical center. The dusty town of Santa Fe becomes the nexus around which swirl the fortunes and strategies of a mixed set of serious overachievers, from Kit Carson, the original mountain man, to James K. Polk, the enigmatic president whose achievements, in the dreaded name of Manifest Destiny, were almost biblical in scope. Sides is alive to the exuberance and alert to the tragedy of the taking of the West." --Russell Shorto, author of Island at the Center of the World"For a huge percentage of us immigrant Americans (those whose ancestors arrived after 1492), Hampton Sides fills a gaping hole in our knowledge of American history--a vivid account of how 'The New Men' swept away the thriving civilizations of the Native Americans in their conquest of the West." --Tony HillermanA Magnificent History of How the West Was Really Won--a Sweeping Tale of Shame and GloryIn the fall of 1846 the venerable Navajo warrior Narbona, greatest of his people's chieftains, looked down upon the small town of Santa Fe, the stronghold of the Mexican settlers he had been fighting his whole long life. He had come to see if the rumors were true--if an army of blue-suited soldiers had swept in from the East and utterly defeated his ancestral enemies. As Narbona gazed down on the battlements and cannons of a mighty fort the invaders had built, he realized his foes had been vanquished--but what did the arrival of these "New Men" portend for the Navajo?Narbona could not have known that "The Army of the West," in the midst of the longest march in American military history, was merely the vanguard of an inexorable tide fueled by a self-righteous ideology now known as "Manifest Destiny." For twenty years the Navajo, elusive lords of a huge swath of mountainous desert and pasturelands, would ferociously resist the flood of soldiers and settlers who wished to change their ancient way of life or destroy them.Hampton...

Called the "Great Pathfinder", Daniel Boone is most famous for opening up the West to settlers through Kentucky. A symbol of America's pioneering spirit Boone was a skilled outdoorsman and an avid reader although he never attended school. Sydelle Kramer skillfully recounts Boone's many adventures such as the day he rescued his own daughter from kidnappers.

Sarah Graves, a young woman from Vermont, faces unimaginable hardship on the Donner Overland Journey to California in 1846, as her family and an emigrant party battle snowstorms, starvation, and limited resources in the Sierra Nevada.

Available for the first time in enriched e-book format, this edition offers visual and historical insights into Susanna Moodie's writing via electronic weblinks. Like a full-colour footnote, select words and phrases throughout the book are links to websites that contain a wealth of additional information, pictures, definitions and historical information that gives context to the text. Now, with the click of a mouse, you can investigate the world of Moodie's Upper Canada without having to leave your screen.Roughing It in the Bush, first published in 1852, helped to destroy British illusions about life in Upper Canada. Susanna Moodie described a life of backbreaking labour, poverty, and hardship on a pioneer farm in the colonial wilderness. Her sharp observations, satirical character sketches, and moments of despair and terror were a startling contrast to the widely circulated optimistic accounts of life in British North America, written to entice readers across the Atlantic.The spontaneity, wit, and candour of Moodie's account of life on a backwoods farm give Roughing It in the Bush enduring appeal."Roughing It in the Bush" is an extraordinarily detailed record of pioneer life. It is also a journey of exploration and revelation into Moodie's own character, as we watch her grow from ill-prepared immigrant to spirited survivor."—Charlotte Gray

A biographical history of influential African American pioneers and freedom fighters in the Midwest, including Sara Jane Woodson, Peter Clark, and Dred Scott.

Prior to the establishment of the National Weather Service, the U.S. Government lured homesteaders out to the Dakotas, Wyoming and other untested regions of the developing nations, partly by obscuring the harsh realties of the mercurial and deadly weather conditions in those areas. This non-fiction book details the tragic consequences--primarily to very young victims--of the "perfect storm" of 1888.

In 1888, two sisters and their classmates endure a blizzard in Nebraska, surviving thanks to the courageous actions of their schoolteacher.