David Laskin, an author of multiple books on history, weather, and literary biography, was educated at Harvard and Oxford in history and literature. He started his career as a book publisher before embarking on a freelance writing career. He was a reporter for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Seattle Metropolitan. Mentored by another well-known historical author, Ivan Doig, Laskin is known for his thorough primary-source research that forms the narratives of his nonfiction books.

His books focus on the biographies of ordinary people caught up in vast historical events. One of his books covers the history of his own family’s immigration from Europe and their ensuing diaspora, and another addresses the lives of a dozen immigrants who served in World War I. The Children’s Blizzard is the most lauded of Laskin’s work, a 2006 national bestseller that earned several awards. His meticulous research of immigrant accounts from the Great Plains states during the expansion of the Homestead Act is a result of his education as a historian, bringing to life the forgotten stories of the Scandinavian and Eastern European immigrants who populated the Midwest and survived its weather travails. His research into the particulars of meteorology also inform the

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