“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, [he] 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 of The 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.
The P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

The Children's Blizzard

History

Laskin, David

Americas

Harper

Sports & Outdoors

Harper-perennial

“The Long Way Home is a riveting remembrance of the Great War by a master writer…. Deeply compelling.” — Douglas Brinkley 
“Moving, revealing, and lovingly researched, this book is a must read, and a great read, for any of us whose forebears came from overseas-meaning just about all of us.” — Erik Larson 
The author of the award-winning The Children’s Blizzard, David Laskin, returns with a remarkable true story of the immigrants who risked their lives fighting for America during the Great War.

The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

In The Long Way Home, award-winning writer David Laskin traces the lives of a dozen men who left their childhood homes in Europe, journeyed through Ellis Island, and started over in a strange landonly to cross the Atlantic again in uniform when their adopted country entered the Great War. Though they had known little of America outside of tight-knit ghettos and backbreaking labor, these foreign-born conscripts were rapidly transformed into soldiers, American soldiers, in the ordeal of war. Two of the men in this book won the Medal of Honor. Three died in combat. Those who survived were profoundly alteredand their heroic service reshaped their families and ultimately the nation itself. Epic, inspiring, and masterfully written, this book is an unforgettable true story of the Great War, the world it remade, and the humble, loyal men who became Americans by fighting for America.

Harper Large Print

The author of the The Children’s Blizzard delivers an epic work of twentieth century history through the riveting story of one extraordinary Jewish family In tracing the roots of this family—his own family—Laskin captures the epic sweep of the twentieth century. A modern-day scribe, Laskin honors the traditions, the lives, and the choices of his ancestors: revolutionaries and entrepreneurs, scholars and farmers, tycoons and truck drivers. The Family is a deeply personal, dramatic, and emotional account of people caught in a cataclysmic time in world history. A century and a half ago, a Torah scribe and his wife raised six children in a yeshivatown at the western fringe of the Russian empire. Bound by their customs and ancient faith, the pious couple expected their sons and daughter to carry family traditions into future generations. But the social and political crises of our time decreed otherwise. The torrent of history took the scribe’s family down three very different roads. One branch immigrated to America and founded the fabulously successful Maidenform Bra Company; another went to Palestine as pioneers and participated in the contentious birth of the state of Israel; the third branch remained in Europe and suffered the onslaught of the Nazi occupation. With cinematic power and beauty, bestselling author David Laskin brings to life the upheavals of the twentieth century through the story of one family, three continents, two world wars, and the rise and fall of nations.

The Family: A Journey into the Heart of the Twentieth Century

Penguin Publishing Group

What Sammy Knew: A Novel

"Laskin's narrative captures it all--the fervor, the drugs, the sex, the politics, the magic, the tragedy of the 60s and 70s and most of all the angst of that wonderful, terrible time. A fun, transporting, and evocative read." --Daniel James Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat A turbulent coming-of-age novel about a young man who loses his innocence and finds his soul in the ferment of New York City in 1970 On the brink of a new decade, as the radical 1960s turns to the 1970s, seventeen-year-old Sam Stein is about to grow up in a hurry. Raised in a cushy Long Island suburb where his parents consign him to the care of Tutu Carter, their live-in housekeeper, Sam is learning uncomfortable truths about his place and privilege in his relationship with Tutu and in the world. When he stumbles into a New Year's party and meets firebrand Kim Goodman, his life is changed forever. In short order, he falls in love and flees with her to the drug-soaked East Village of Manhattan, and gets swept up in the revolutionary political movements of the time. An aspiring writer, Sam bears witness to the seismic upheavals of the day while remaining utterly blind to a high-stakes plot that Kim and her comrades are executing right under his nose. As seemingly unrelated events click into place, what Sammy knew and what Sammy didn't know become matters of life and death - not only for himself and Kim, but for Tutu and her grandson Leon in Harlem, and for the radical protest movement teetering between disillusion and revolution. Compulsively readable, peopled by unforgettable characters, crackling with wit and suspense, What Sammy Knew brilliantly evokes a chaotic, dangerously polarized, and historically important moment in America.

Literature & Fiction

United States

Penguin??Books

"Laskin's narrative captures it all--the fervor, the drugs, the sex, the politics, the magic, the tragedy of the 60s and 70s and most of all the angst of that wonderful, terrible time. A fun, transporting, and evocative read." --Daniel James Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat\nA turbulent coming-of-age novel about a young man who loses his innocence and finds his soul in the ferment of New York City in 1970\nOn the brink of a new decade, as the radical 1960s turns to the 1970s, seventeen-year-old Sam Stein is about to grow up in a hurry. Raised in a cushy Long Island suburb where his parents consign him to the care of Tutu Carter, their live-in housekeeper, Sam is learning uncomfortable truths about his place and privilege in his relationship with Tutu and in the world. When he stumbles into a New Year's party and meets firebrand Kim Goodman, his life is changed forever. In short order, he falls in love and flees with her to the drug-soaked East Village of Manhattan, and gets swept up in the revolutionary political movements of the time.\nAn aspiring writer, Sam bears witness to the seismic upheavals of the day while remaining utterly blind to a high-stakes plot that Kim and her comrades are executing right under his nose. As seemingly unrelated events click into place, what Sammy knew and what Sammy didn't know become matters of life and death - not only for himself and Kim, but for Tutu and her grandson Leon in Harlem, and for the radical protest movement teetering between disillusion and revolution.\nCompulsively readable, peopled by unforgettable characters, crackling with wit and suspense, What Sammy Knew brilliantly evokes a chaotic, dangerously polarized, and historically important moment in America.

Combining literary biography with astute reporting and moral insight, David Laskin shows how sex, politics, and art affected relationships among the Partisan Review writers: Mary McCarthy, Edmund Wilson, Philip Rahv, Robert Lowell, Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Hardwick, Hannah Arendt, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, and Diana Trilling. It is the women who steal the show with their their groundbreaking work, their harrowing experiences of marriage, abuse, and betrayal, their passion for writing and disdain for feminism, their struggles and achievements.

Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals

Arts & Literature

University of Chicago Press

272pages. in4. Broché. Laskin is a writer with some experience as a copywriter. Happily, his status as a relative outsider is not a drawback, because he includes a wide variety of information from people working in advertising, while remaining quite objective about the field. After describing the industry as a whole, Laskin discusses jobs with advertising agencies, with companies that advertise, and with companies that sell advertising space and time. He includes advice on job hunting and lists of trade associations, publications, and the top 50 U. S. advertising agencies. Similar in scope and style to Judith Katz's The Ad Game ( LJ 9/15/84), this is a worthy addition to career collections. Wendy Allex, Tampa-Hillsborough Cty. P. L. System, Fla. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Getting Into Advertising

Business & Money

Ballantine Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Laskin, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Laskin, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Laskin, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Children's Blizzard

The Children's Blizzard

The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

The Family: A Journey into the Heart of the Twentieth Century

What Sammy Knew: A Novel

What Sammy Knew: A Novel

Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals

Getting Into Advertising