This book is a really good read, and the human interest parts of it are exceptional. However, I take exception to the revisionist tone of the book. The author is judging the decisions of people in 1874-1888 based on modern ideas and technology. It really doesn't matter a …more hill of beans if the signal corps failed to get their warning flags up in time. The only people who would have known would have been those who lived within sight of the flags. There were no TVs, radios, telephones or even cars with which to spread that word. What does he expect would have happened, some Paul Revere would have gotten on his horse and galloped sixty or eighty miles shouting :"the blizzard is coming, the blizzard is coming" in subzero temperatures? That would have been madness. No horse could travel far enough and fast enough to warn anyone and the outcome would have been substantially the same, except for the additional fatality of the horse and rider. I also take exception with the idea the author seems to be presenting, that the immigrants would have been better off had they not been lured to the prairies by false advertising. Had the Ukrainian Mennonites not migrated to the plains, they likely would have died at the hands of Stalin within 45 years, with no survivors. Yes, life on the plains was tough. Yes, the immigrants lost children. But life was tough all over in the late 19th and early 20th century. There was no safe place for children in that period. None. Revising or judging history is always a dangerous idea. Revising and assigning blame without taking all the facts of history into account is just plain silly. (less)