Giants in the Earth
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Giants in the Earth
| Full title | Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie |
|---|---|
| Author | Ole Edvart Rolvaag |
| Published | 1927 |
| Pages | 560 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | A Norwegian immigrant family breaks sod in the Dakota Territory in the 1870s, split between Per Hansa, who reads the empty land as opportunity, and his wife Beret, for whom it is a spiritual catastrophe. The settlement story told without triumphalism — the cost side of westward expansion, written by someone whose own family paid it. |
Giants in the Earth
Where I heard about it
- Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, a 468-title curriculum published on Substack in December 2025, listed under Fiction in the Ages 13-99+ band.
About this edition
Ole Edvart Rolvaag (1876-1931) emigrated from Norway in 1896, farmed in South Dakota, and taught Norwegian literature at St. Olaf College. He wrote the novel in Norwegian, as two volumes published in 1924 and 1925; the English Giants in the Earth followed in 1927 and became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Connections
- A Library to Build Great Americans — the 468-title curriculum this card came from; listed in the Ages 13-99+ band under Fiction.
- Ole Edvart Rolvaag — the author.
- Immigration — the experience the novel is built out of.
- Frontier — the setting, and the thing being tested.
- Agriculture — the work the book is about.
- American Dream — the promise the book measures against what actually happened.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.