“Well-researched, well-written, and highly engaging”- National ReviewHere is the dramatic story of the Blizzard of 1888, which caused havoc up and down the East coast of the United States. Award-winning author Mary Cable recreates – in all its human and natural drama – the three-day debacle that began on the night of Sunday, March 11, 1888. We meet the heroes and villains alike as they struggle … they struggle through the mounting snow and icy winds to keep the wheels of civilization from grinding to a halt. The Blizzard of 88 is a moving and dramatic history in the tradition of David McCullough’s classic The Johnstown Flood.
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This was a well-written book about the Blizzard of 1888, which devastated a great deal of the Northeast. It put our present weather issues in perspective. Reading about how they coped with the situation, and how some perished made me think about our modern conveniences. Even if we were snowed in for a week, most of us would survive. We would not consider walking miles to work in a blizzard, just to retain a job. Times have changed, not necessarily for the better.
People who live in, or are familiar with, New York and the surrounding area would find this quite interesting as you see constant references to street names and places as you experience the most amazing blizzard of 1888. Pictures would have been great, but the descriptions are still striking. Try to experience what those people did in that horrific storm, and realize the unfortunate situation of not having much in the way of communications that would have prevented some of the suffering. The generosity of strangers is heart-warming!
An amazing story about NYC, a blizzard and life before snowplows.
Good account of how weather affected the early settlers
Rather than being about the storm it is a story built around new weather prediction and the romantic life of two couples as well as a Rooming lady that is the wise one with lots of advise for living – little science or weather mostly the romantic path of the main characters and how the storm affected these characters.
Boring ! It is the same story over and over .
good book
Fascinating history of an awe inspiring event.
Not what I thought
Great history of NYC and life at the time for both rich and poor woven into the tale of this huge storm.
Very interesting, especially since I have recollections of my grandfather telling stories of delivering milk in West Hartford, CT, and making the mail run between West Hartford and the Hartford train station the days after the storm.
Very good.
Love history. This was very interesting.
I was not overly impressed.
It was so interesting to learn about this historical storm. Life was so different in the late 1880s and storms back then were life and death situations . From not knowing the storm was coming to how people braved the elements to get to work. I marveled at the differences of getting through a blizzard. It was an easy read that was like reading news articles.
I’ve heard it said that The Weather Channel is the old folks MTV. I’m not that bad, but I did enjoy this book that tells about this famous blizzard. Seems like most of it was individual stories of folks from NYC and how they coped with it. I worry about losing power because our transition is complete. The reason the blizzard didn’t affect rural folks that much was because they hadn’t transitioned too far from the ways things had always been done, but city people were already used to phones, electricity, public transportation, etc. I recommend this book. I thought it was quite interesting, even though a similar blizzard these days would be incredibly devastating to everyone. Scary to think about, what with the increase in weather problems, including fire, drought, etc.
A look at the world at a different time
Takes into account various newspaper stories of the time in addition to personal reflections of persons who documented their experiences.
I love reading of how people react to the unexpected, so found this book intriguing as I am unfamiliar with urban weather emergencies. the differences in rural and urban response surprised me as I am a proponent of emergency preparedness. I really enjoyed this book. well researched, well done.
Very enlightening.