The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
- ISBN13: 9780618773473
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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).
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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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.
Rating: 1 / 5
An over hyped political/enviromental fluff piece wrapped in the guise of a historical text. No serious thought is given to the historical subect matter, only deftly written jabs at ‘uninformed settlers, swindling politicians and failed farm policy.’ Pass on Timothy Egan if you are looking for a work of historical value, read if you are easily swayed by hyper, sensationalized, flippant, journalistic writing.
And for crying out loud, Follett and Darrouzett, Texas need to be flipped on your ‘map’ and “No Man’s Land” is the entire Oklahoma panhandle, not just the western portion as your book states.
Rating: 1 / 5
This was easily one of the worst books I have ever read! From the moment I opened this book it started to put me to sleep. Many people may think “Oh, it will pick up later.”, but it does exactly the opposite! If you need something that will help you fall asleep better then I do recommend this book. You will be interested in this book if you are interested in investing an afternoon to reading a history textbook about a time that quite frankly was forgotten and rightfully so was.
Rating: 1 / 5
This account of one of the worst environmental disasters to hit this country, next to the “Andrea Gail’ in 1938 is well done but a little dull. Since I was not born before it happened, what I thought was interesting apparently was not what the censor thought, so here we go again. My sister remembered the Depression as she was eleven years older than I and said that even here in Knoxville, Tennessee, we were hit hard. Richard Marius, as a young professor at the University of Tennessee, wrote a fictional account about a drought which took place just out of this area. I read that book and was amazed at the consequences of a long drought and the effect it has on the humans and animals, day without end and no rain in sight. A drought is one thing, but the catastrophe of the Dust Bowl in the places this author focuses on brings home the death and desolation of not only the dustballs swirling around like so much sagebrush, but the devastation caused by the swarms of insects; the grasshoppers would eat a whole field and strip it clear in a short amount of time. I heard a lecture at the History Center of a man who endured the Dust Bowl and the Depression. It was no picnic.
The homesteaders out on the Great Plains were lured into planting wheat, but Kansas was the only place it took hold. The plow-up of the thick grassland, where the buffalo roamed, in the Twenties; thus, the farmers of the High Plains out West “shattered the natural world of that area, not anticipating the possibility of a lingering drought. With no top soil or grass to keep the earth intact, the campaign to plant wheat prompted by the government for gobal consumption proved to be ill-fated and the unsuspecting settlers destroyed the native environment.
The dusters, called ‘black blizzards’ followed swarms of birds trying to get out of the way of the mile-high wall of dirt. The worst one took place in 1935, but the phenonomen went on for another four years. This book is divided into three sections, from 1901 to 1939. The government had lured inexperienced farmers to that good-for-nothing land which stretched into infinity (lots of space and emptiness on that flatland), who knew nothing of the dangers of tampering with nature. In this area, a group came over from England to be gentlemen famers in a failed project called Rugby. They were educators and intellectuals, as opposed to those in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and knew next to nothing about crops, droughts, harvests, and such. They were the precursors to the hippies as they sought to have a communal lifestyle here in East Tennessee. The effects of the Dust Bowl reached this state but not to the extent of those who caused it with long-term consequences which would totally alter their meager lives for the worst. It’s a wonder anyone survived, but he found some to interview. If their memories were like the people who survived the Great Hurricane in New England in 1938, part of it is fiction. But, when written by a newspaper reporter, there are always elaborations to make things sound better. This, I think, is one of them. He also wrote THE GOOD RAIN and LASSO THE WIND, leading up to the Dust Bowl which is fairly new — just out and many have found it already.
Rating: 2 / 5
An eye opener to say the least. From what the whites did to the American Indians and the buffalo, (not to mention the land it’s self) I can not feel sorry for those people and was secretly glad to see how the earth rose up in their defense. I saw karma at it’s best and there is more to come because we have not learned our lesson yet. We have defaced the whole planet in our mindless greed and I think the “dust bowl” days were just a small taste of what’s to come.
Rating: 5 / 5