Product Description
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years
of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since.
Timothy Egan's critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter
of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical
reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through
the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to
carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the
death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe,
Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become
his heroes, "the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he
opens up with urgency and respect" (New York Times).
In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst
Hard Time is "arguably the best nonfiction book yet" (Austin Statesman
Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited
upon our land and a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of
trifling with nature.
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 The worst book I have read in years.
Let me preface this by saying that I love reading about history. Maybe my expectations for this book were too high, but I HATED it. 50 pages, 100 pages, 150 pages in I kept fighting the urge to put the book down and forget about it, but I kept hoping that it would get better. It didn't.
This book sucks. It was awful; horribly disappointing. It dragged and dragged and dragged, and when I finally finished it I returned it to the bookstore. I will never read it again and would not recommend it to anyone. There were a couple parts that were interesting, but most of it was mind-numbingly dull. Egan went into great (and in my opinion, needless) detail of the history and mundane details of many of the families, but not the kind of detail that contributes to the message of the book or gives you much insight characters.
There were too many narratives incorporated into the book, and it was difficult to keep the different families, individuals and cities straight, especially since many of their stories were so similar. I get it--everyone's animals died, nobody's plants would grow, dunes were high, and people had dust pneumonia. I wish Egan had further developed fewer stories; it would have made the book more engaging. He hopscotched between families, communities, politicians, and individuals constantly, making the book more difficult to read and appreciate.
It says it is "can't-put-it-down history" on the cover, but that is a complete lie. I honestly can't believe I finished it, it was so boring and I literally was able to read only 10 pages at a time because it was so utterly BORING. I expected more from this book. It read like a too-long chapter from a junior high history book. I have no doubt that the story of the dust bowl is fascinating, so I was extremely disappointed with this book.
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 A fascinating account--five stars aren't enough!
I hate to use such a trite phrase, but there is no other way to put it: Mr. Egan makes history come alive. What was but a few paragraphs in my American history classes is related here as a very real and tragic event that happened to real people, not just faceless, unnamed masses. He truly portrays the overwhelming immensity of the Dust Bowl and its effect on the nation not only at the time, but even today. I highly recommend this amazing and enthralling story.
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why can't more history be written like this? ( mrslars )
If you're hedging about reading The Worst Hard Time," thinking you already know everything about the dust bowl and the droughts on the Great Plains during the Depression era, don't. It's definitely not fiction and it's told by those whose families lived it. These people who settled and actually farmed in the areas of the Oklahoma & Texas panhandles were called nesters -- and for a while they had everything going for them -- until things went horribly wrong. This is their story, and while it's history, it's written in a style that makes you unable to stop reading (in my case, to stop listening -- I had it on CD).
The author has done an incredible amount of research and interviews, putting together the story of the Dust Bowl storms of the 1930s and their effects not only on the land, but on the economy, on people's health and mental state as well. After children started to die of dust pneumonia, for example, women questioned whether or not they should even be bringing more children into the world. Mothers had to put wet sheets over their babies' cribs, over the windows, and try to shut up any opening in their homes to try to hold back the wind (known as a duster) and its deadly cargo of dust. As things got worse and the economy started to dry up, some people took to canning Russian Thistles, tumbleweeds or yucca just to survive -- any livestock they may have had produced dust-laden milk. The food crop market bottomed out; farmers once prosperous from the earlier wheat boom were now selling off anything they could find just to keep their families fed and to try to hold the bankers at bay trying not to lose their farms. But the worst hard time began with Black Sunday, in April of '35 -- in which a gigantic duster blew and made the air so clogged with dirt that it was often fatal to just be outdoors since a person could choke to death due to the massive amounts of soil & dust in the air. Egan traces this period using the accounts of actual survivors of the time, and asks some hard questions regarding the root causes -- and questions and tries to figure out why people actually stayed rather than leave the miserable conditions. He also examines the government's role in finding solutions for these plains farmers.
The above is just a bare sketch of what's between the covers of this book. I HIGHLY recommend this one to anyone even remotely interested in the topic. I wouldn't necessarily call it an objective work of history (you can really feel the author's emotion throughout the pages), but it is history well worth reading. I wish more people would offer history done like this.
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What Your Grandparents Did not Tell You ( stevahng )
When I asked my Grandparents about the dust bowl, they would not say much at all about it - other than they had some crop failures - once I read this book, I realized how horrible a time it really was and that my Grandparents just wanted to move on with their lives and not think about those "Dark" times. This book tells what it was like from the perspective of many people who lived through the dust bowl - from the joyous beginnings to the tragic end. The scope of the dust bowl was incredible and the effect it had on people was heart wrenching. The author even discusses how the dust bowl affected different cultural groups, such as the Germans from Russia immigrants who were discriminated against during both world wars. Once you read this book, you will have a better understanding of the region, what happened during the storms, how the storms affected the nation as a whole, and how the Government started to realize it had to help our nation conserve our soil. The references are great and provide a stepping stone to more information if one is interested. A hard subject, a good read, and worth its weight when I took it on a 60 mile hike through the mountains of Washington this summer.
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 A Great Book About The Dust Bowl ( schafer_steve )
My ex-girlfriend's dad recommended this book to me. He grew up in north-central Kansas during the latter part of the Dust Bowl and still remembers it. He lived in close enough proximity to remember walking to school with a handkerchief tied around his mouth and the gritty feel of the dust as it blew eastwards. Having read very little about the Dust Bowl and its effects upon America, I decided that I needed to learn more so I bought a copy for myself.
The author did a fantastic job of bringing the human and economic cost of the Dust Bowl to life in a way that few authors could. He personalized this tragic period through interviews with survivors of this period and by reproducing sections of a diary written by Don Hartwell, a Nebraska farmer. In the latter, you can feel the desperation and depression almost float up from the pages.
But the author does more than just bring the Dust Bowl to life. He reaches back to a time when the epicenter of the Dust Bowl was a vast desert of prairie grass populated by Comanche Indians and eventually ranches, in particular the XIT Ranch. In a sense of foreboding, he quotes the words of many a XIT cowboy who said "Don't plow it under" as people came from across the US and world to buy land, plant wheat and make their mark in life.
The author weaves into his story the various individuals and groups, for example, John McCarty or the Volga Germans, who all had their reasons for coming to "No Man's Land", staying there and eventually leaving. He writes of local government's inability to deal with the human and economic cost of farm foreclosures and business bankruptcies.
In short, this book is a keeper. It should be required reading in many high school and college classrooms. And for those of us well out of high school or college, this is an excellent book for those who want to learn more about this tragic period in American history.
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