The Worst Hard Time: Summary and book reviews of The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, plus links to an excerpt from The Worst Hard Time and a biography of Timothy Egan.
The Worst Hard Time The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
by Timothy Egan
Hardcover: Dec 2005,
320 pages.
Paperback: Sep 2006,
352 pages.
The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in
the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing
ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people
that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer
Prize–winning New York Times journalist and author
Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their
communities through the rise and fall of the region,
going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in
basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a
futile effort to keep the dust out. He follows their
desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black
blizzards, crop failure, and the deaths of loved ones.
Drawing on the voices of those who stayed and
survived—those who, now in their eighties and nineties,
will soon carry their memories to the grave—Egan tells a
story of endurance and heroism against the backdrop of
the Great Depression.
As only great history can, Egan's book captures the very
voice of the times: its grit, pathos, and abiding
courage. Combining the human drama of Isaac's Storm
with the sweep of The American People in the Great
Depression, The Worst Hard Time is a lasting
and important work of American history.
Winner of the 2006 National Book Award.
BOOK REVIEWS
BookBrowse
While Egan has nothing but admiration for the individual farmers caught up in the devastation, he has a harsher view for the policies, and the people behind the policies, that managed to eradicate the "greatest grassland in the world" in an historical blink of an eye. Full Review (1141 words).
Media Reviews
Booklist
All the elements of the iconic dust bowl photographs come together in the author's evocative portrait of those who first prospered and then suffered during the 1930s drought.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. With characters who seem to have sprung from a novel by Sinclair Lewis or Steinbeck, and Egan's powerful writing, this account will long remain in readers' minds.
The Seattle Times - Mary Ann Gwinn
In The Worst Hard Time Egan lets it rip. This is a sad and angry book, written with vivid description and a propulsive prose all the more remarkable for the fact that most of the people who lived through this story are no longer alive to tell the tale.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - John Freeman
Timothy Egan, a reporter for The New York Times, portrays the period in his gripping account, the giant black clouds that choked the drought-stricken southern plains were born of nature and economic comeuppance.
The San Francisco Chronicle - Elizabeth Corcoran
Timothy Egan ... masterfully depicts the bitter life in the Great Plains in the 1930s. John Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath painted a searing portrait of the Okies who fled the Plains. But far more people clung to their farms, hoping that the next season would be better .... Egan has admirably captured a part of our American experience that should not be forgotten.
USA Today - Bob Minzesheimer
Egan recreates that period by weaving together the stories told by a half-dozen families. That is both the book's strength and weakness. It does justice to the range of suffering, but it's harder to follow than a novel that would focus on one family.
The subtitle, The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, is publishing hype. As Egan's extensive source notes make clear, pieces of the story have been told before, although never as comprehensively or as well. It's a great read about a horrible time, filled with lessons still worth learning.
The Washington Post - Wendy Smith
Timothy Egan's searing history of the economic and ecological collapse of the southern Great Plains during the 1930s is an epic cautionary tale ... Egan's fluent narrative chronicles the terrifying consequences of a reckless hubris that in a few decades stripped the earth of prairie grass that for centuries had protected it from erosion.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Mimi in Arizona A must read for every American The subject matter is very timely for our country today. It feels like you're reading about our current economic meltdown, not about a period 80 years ago. Scary, haunting and incredibly well told. So worth the time you'll spend reading it.... Read More
Rated of 5
by Robert Sego Touching the Essence of the Land and the People Timothy Egan provided tremendous insight into a question that has plagued me since I was able to think independently. What were those people even doing there? With my vanishing family roots in the Amarillo area, the last vestiges of which are my... Read More
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of 5
by Mimi in Arizona
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