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

Excellant. I heard about the "Dust Bowl" but never imagined what it really was and how terrible of time in our history. This book really opened my eyes. Hearing the stories from people that survived that time makes me fully appreciate how we have it today.

What was the worst environmental disaster of the 20th century? Would you believe the over-farming of the southern Great Plains that led to the enormous dust storms of the 1930s? The biggest of these storms on April 14, 1935, which went down in history as "Black Sunday," completely blocked out the sun and contained more tons of dust and dirt than was removed to dig the Panama Canal. All of it airborne - clogging lungs, blinding cattle, burying homesteads, and turning the Great Plains into a lunar crater. Through diary accounts, personal interviews, and newspaper stories, Egan paints a vivid and personal picture of the people and places most affected by this ecological disaster. The book is fascinating - and penetrating. It's hard to imagine why so many people of Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska remained behind on what became a blistering hot patch of dirt. But they did. Egan's account is one of the best written historical novels, I've ever read. It's fast, it's detailed, and it packs an emotional kick. It's like stepping into a time capsule. The one weakness of the book, however, is Egan's failure to really put the disaster into the context of today. It would have been interesting if he spent more time on exploring how the disaster shaped the lives of people living on the Great Plains now. But otherwise, "The Worst Hard Time" deserves your attention.

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...since I was born in the late 60's yet here in 2008 I wanted to know about the folks that survived during that period of time, how they lived and why it had all happened. Timothy made this real and "touchable" for me. Your heart breaks for these people, it's a very moving tribute. I came away grateful for everything in my life.

Through the striated layers of heartbreak that Tim Egan exposes in this chronicle of the '30s Dust Bowl, it's hard not to wonder why. Why did a sizeable population gravitate to America's high plains in the first place? Why did so many stay in the face of crushing catastrophe? Could no one see the folly in ripping up millions of square miles of prairie with only the vaguest sense of how how to transform it into arable farmland? This story is less about natural disaster than Greek tragedy. Not a page goes by without an example of hubris so glaring it makes the burgeoning horror seem inevitable.

Egan weaves together the territory's history and the personal stories of its settlers with grim effect, punctuating a terrible irony. For all the strength and decency of the characters profiled here, they are victims of something that could have been avoided. The Dust Bowl was a man made event, the triumph of hope over reason.

Egan made a point in this work of detailing only the stories of people who stayed in the High Plains long after the devastating dust storms had reduced their lives to ruin. It's an interesting authorial choice, because he never quite gets to the answer of why they stayed, but in the process of trying, he offers engrossing portraits of characters whose motivations can't be explained by usual human logic. These were people who committed, who stuck. They believed.

In the beginning they came, like anyone in the American epic, to better themselves. In Dalhart, Texas, the center of the storm, we meet Bam White, a transient with a young family looking to settle and find some stability; Hazel Lucas, a young teacher with the simple goal of marrying and raising a family in a wholesome place; Doc Dawson, the tobacco spitting proprietor of the area santitarium; and a score of other colorful, guileless souls whose cheerful resolve gives the place a tragic optimism. No one, not even the dubious, displaced Native Americans in the area, could have foretold what fate had in store for this innocent crew.

Egan doesn't flinch from the bruality at the core of life on the plains. The fight for survival is never pretty, but part of the pathos in this tale lies in the absurdity of man's attempt to conquer nature when nature won't cooperate. "BIG RABBIT DRIVE SUNDAY-BRING CLUBS", was a sign posted regularly around Dalhart as the residents tried to eject one particular furry menace by wholesale slaughter. The futility of this approach, and the fury of nature's revenge, becomes apparent toward the end of the book when, after attack after attack by dust storms of biblibical proportions, the Old Testament comes to terrfiying life. From out of nowhere, another black cloud forms over the devastated homesteads, but this one is different, undulating against the sky, alive, with millions and millions of grasshoppers, who settle on anything green and living, and leave death in their wake.

This is the coda to the story of the violence that man inflicted on the High Plains, a reminder of humanity's puny state. But somehow, the story of the surivors is less one of learning than enduring. Perhaps there will always be times with endurance is the Best Last Chance.

Save for the descriptions of dust and dirt, which get a little tiring, this book is a great read. His writing style is very readable and his research and understanding of the material is obvious. It is a good lesson for these times we live in. Perhaps we could use some of the wisdom of those times to understand what we need to do to cure our environmental and economic ills.