The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Edition 001)

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Editorial Reviews:

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.

Customer Reviews: Read 185 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

MY BEST READ OF 2005 December 18, 2005
137 out of 143 found this review helpful

Beyond a doubt, this was the best of the books I read during this past year. Having had many family members who were caught up in this, one of the worst natural (actually it seems it was more man made than natural) disasters to strike our country, made this work of even more interest to me. Mr. Eagan has not only given us a wonderful account of this era in our nations history, he has made it come alive through his exceptional story telling abilities. This is not a dry (no pun intended), academic history of the great depression. Rather it is a history of a group of people who lived through the worst of it, the great dust bowl at the center of our country. These are real people and the author treats them as such. Very few meaningless statistics mar the story line, few government reports are offered or cited to reduce the human suffering to neatly typed pieces of paper. As you read this book, you come to realize that these people are just like you and me. You read and ponder "what if?" The book is quite readable, quite informative and one that I will no doubt give a reread to in the near future. Recommend this one highly!

5 out of 5 stars

The Ecological Disaster Of The Great Depression December 25, 2005
88 out of 94 found this review helpful

2005 has been a banner year for readable histories about natural disasters (see "A Crack in the World : America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906" by Simon Winchester) and natural disasters compounded by a series of catastrophic human errors (see "Curse of the Narrows : The Halifax Disaster of 1917" by Laura MacDonald). Mr Egan's history falls into the latter category with his story of the Dust Bowl during the Depression.

"The Worst Hard Time" traces the horrific consequences of poor farming practices in the Central Plain States during the drought of the 1930's. It is not a dry book about soil samples and weather charts but a living account of the human cost in fighting against tarantulas & seas of grasshoppers eating every plant in their path while struggling against the "duster" storms that blot out the sun. The reader can think of the Dust Bowl storms as the hurricanes of the Plain States. Illustrated with photographs of the poverty of that era, the reader will be shock and angry at the suffering of those farmers who attempted to ride out those storms.

5 out of 5 stars

The horror...the horror April 23, 2007
34 out of 37 found this review helpful

Absolutely totally bleak. Depressing. Tragic. American experiences in the horrific Dust Bowl of the 1930's as related in "Worst Hard Times" was all of this and more. Yet in the hands of author Timothy Egan the story is compelling and an absolute must read for anyone interested in the Thirties, the Depression or, of course, the Dust Bowl.
The statistics are here as are thorough accounts of the incredible dust storms that devastated a land an its people. Egan puts names to many of those who survived and faces to the names. Here is the success of "The Worst Hard Times," putting the devastating impact of the ecological disaster in human terms.
Meets those who were there. Some still alive today to tell the tale. A tale of abject poverty caused or agitated by Mother Nature reminding us who the mortals are and what fools they often be. For part of the problem was man-made as newcomers to the lands farmed soil that was ideal for ranching, with devastating results. With drought, heat waves and wind the loose soil was soon part of mighty clouds dumping dust everywhere. Into homes, eyes and food and on a couple of occasions to eastern cities including the nation's capital and beyond.
I've read many stories of survival from shipwrecks to Arctic journeys to long marches to epic battles -- "Worst Hard Times" measures up to them all. The human capacity to endure can never be under estimated and it is never better told than in this book.
The heroes are those who persisted against all odds and a Federal Government under Franklin Roosevelt that did not hesitate to help.
There are eccentric interesting characters aplenty and individual stories to tug at the heart strings and to inspire. The landscape may have been bleak but the human spirit was rich and exciting.

3 out of 5 stars

Storm After Storm, After Day February 15, 2007
21 out of 23 found this review helpful

This book is both one of the most interesting histories I've read in a long time and one of the more dull books I've read in the last year. The first 150 pages, when Egan sets the Dust Bowl scene and introduces us to the people he will follow throughout the story are fantastic. The pace is quick, the details are very insightful and I learned a lot about why the Dust Bowl happened and just how devestating it was. Egan successfully makes the dust storms that ravaged the Panhandle area as fightening as they must have been for inhabitants and it is very moving just how horrible it was for the residents who loved their homesteads enough to suffer horribly to stay on them. After about 100 pages of reading about several storms and the terrible conditions, however, the book slows a lot. The storms never get less intense and the writing itself doesn't falter, but after a while the reader become immune to the horror and it just becomes boring reading about storm after storm which never seem to change. I'm sure the monotony and misery of it all that lasted for several years is what the unforunate farmers of the Dust Bowl endured, but it is hard to read after a while and not very enjoyable.

All in all, I think all people who are interested in American history should read at least the first part of the book to learn about what happened in middle-America during the Depression and how horrible it was for those not in cities. I would caution, however, that the book gets quite dull after a while and there are long stretches between interesting details.

5 out of 5 stars

Devastating June 11, 2007
21 out of 22 found this review helpful

I was raised by German immigrants much like the folks Egan describes in this book. When I was a teenager I was in part frustrated and perplexed by the scars the Depression and Dust Bowl left on them and our household 40 years after it ended. They were frugal people in the extreme. They made a sport of seeing how much money they could put aside with each paycheck. They never, ever spent money on vacations or in movie theaters. Spending money to eat in a restaurant was a huge deal to these people. Grandma insisted on making all of my clothes until I got a job to buy store bought jeans and t-shirts. Grandpa groused mightily if I wanted anything that cost more than $5. They horded everything from nails (new and used) to toilet paper to toothpaste. For the three of us Grandpa put in a massive kitchen garden in the spring, and Grandma canned enough fruits and vegetables to feed the 9th Calvary every autumn.

Whenever I'd tease them about their ways, I'd get a stern look in return and a lecture about living through the Depression in the Dust Bowl. They'd tell me time and again how lucky I was not to have gone through it, and each time my child self would shrug as if to say, "Whatever."

I didn't really "get" the Dust Bowl or the Depression until I read this book. We're all lucky not to have gone through what these folks did. Imagine having to decide which of your children will get to eat dinner. Imagine being forced to slaughter your starving farm animals because there is absolutely nothing left to feed them. Imagine watching your brothers and sisters slowly choke to death on dust. Imagine going to the ATM for some cash to discover that your bank went out of business yesterday, taking all of your savings and investments with it, and there's nothing you can do to get even a fraction of your money back. Imagine having to abandon your preschoolers to the streets and pray that someone will take them in and feed and cloth them. Imagine holding on to your last quarter for three days before hunger forces you to spend it on a meal, and you have absolutely no idea when or where your next meal is coming from.

Any one of these scenarios would be soul destroying, but all of these things happened to some folks.

My grandparents never really wanted to talk about how they survived the Dust Bowl; they told me a few things, however. Grandpa had to cut the toes out of his only pair a shoes when they grew too small and there was no money to buy a new pair. Grandma lost her youngest brother to an infection because the last doctor had moved out of their town, there was no hospital, and there was no money to pay for medical treatment, anyway. These remembrances came in dribs and drabs; mostly they had an "It's in the past and there's no used in rehashing all those bad times" attitude.

I teared up at times while reading this book, wondering which of the horrors Egan talks about happened to my grandparents. Finally, 20 years into adulthood, I "got" the Depression. I "got" the Dust Bowl.

My Grandma died 20 years ago and my Grandpa in '99. For so many reasons I wish they were still with me, but more than anything else I'd like to tell them that I understand what they went through and that I'm so very sorry it colored the rest of their lives.

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