The Children's Blizzard

The Children's Blizzard
Author: David Laskin
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0061866520

“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. . . . 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 of The Devil in the White City “Heartbreaking. . . . This account of the 1888 blizzard reads like a thriller.” — Entertainment Weekly The gripping true story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived settlers and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier. January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent. By the next morning, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled. With the storm as its dramatic, heartbreaking focal point, The Children's Blizzard captures this pivotal moment in American history by tracing the stories of five families who were forever changed that day. David Laskin has produced a masterful portrait of a tragic crucible in the settlement of the American heartland. The P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Cadillac Desert

Cadillac Desert
Author: Marc Reisner
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 674
Release: 1993-06-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1440672822

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage. This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.

How to Raise Chickens for Meat

How to Raise Chickens for Meat
Author: Michelle Marine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Pets
ISBN: 1510751068

If self-sufficiency and raising your own food is important to you, this book will help you pull together a complete farm-to-table experience. Gone are the days when grandma headed to the chicken coop in search of dinner. In this day and age, when fewer and fewer people know where their food comes from, How to Raise Chickens for Meat helps families take control of their food supply once again. Divided into four easy-to-navigate sections,How to Raise Chickens for Meat is packed with practical information. The first section, Getting Started, includes information on breed specifics, timing, and quantity. This section will help you analyze options and make informed decisions as you get started. The second section, Care & Feeding, dives into the specifics of keeping your flock healthy. Learn how to set up a brooder, what to feed your chickens, how to safely pasture them, and how to keep your flock stress-free. The third section, Butchering, prepares you for one of the more challenging parts of raising chickens for meat. It addresses some of the emotions you may feel along with the actual process of butchering and provides practical tips to make it easier. It also discusses alternative options if you don’t want to process your own chickens. The book concludes with cooking tips and delicious tried and true farm-to-table recipes to impress even the most doubtful family member! How to Raise Chickens for Meat is the resource your homestead library has been missing.