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

Fabulous story -- makes you feel like you're living the life... Also, makes you appreciate what we have today!

Subtitled "The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl", this 2006 non-fiction account of this American tragedy is historical writing at its best. The author is a Pulitizer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times. I loved his simple but powerful writing style which had a touch of literary description that kept me fascinated throughout its 312 pages.

Once upon a time the Great Plains was grassland. For thousands of years it was a place where buffalo and bison grazed. The land is flat, the winds strong, there is little rain, and the variation in temperature extreme. There was no rich soil under the grass. In the early part of the 20th century the buffalo was gone but there were ranches where cattle grazed. But through a combination of factors, including the rapid expansion of the railroads, the government gave away small parcels of this land for farming. This was a bargain for thousands of families who were willing to settle this land. Some were immigrants with hopes and dreams and little money. All looked forward to a good life. And, for a time it was.

Problem was that the grass was ploughed under in order to plant crops. This destroyed the small amount of topsoil that was holding the grass in place. When America entered the World War I, there was a need for wheat. The price for wheat was high. Farmers began to prosper. They took bank loans and bought more and more land which they planted with wheat. When the war ended there was too much wheat, the price went down and the wheat rotted. But that was just the beginning. Huge storms of dust started to blow. People tried to keep it from their houses with by covering the windows with wet sheets. But the dust particles were so small, they got through the barriers. People sickened with lung problems, children died of "dust pneumonia", crops couldn't grow, and people were almost starving.

Some stayed on the land. The Depression was hitting the whole country. There was no place for them to go.

This is their story, told though the eyes of people who lived through it, some of whom are still there. Woven through this story are historical facts and horrific descriptions of the terror of the storms. And, later, even when President Roosevelt tried to help by having trees planted, bringing in a variety of different seeds, and teaching the people contour farming, grasshoppers ruined the crops once again.

There were times I felt like crying as I read the book. And there were times I felt nothing but respect for the grit and gumption and hard work of the farmers. Today, some people still live in this "dust bowl' and modern technology has brought water to the region. But it is still sparsely populated and the people still there will "never forget".

Read this book. It will open your eyes about a part of Americana with a unique and horrific history.

1. In 1930, 256 banks had failed and the cry was "where did our money go?" Oil prices for a barrel dropped from $1.43 to 10 cents. The economy was a pile of glue.

2. By Sep 1929, 1.5 million people were out of work. In 1930, 1,350 banks failed, going under with $853 million in deposits. The next year, 2,294 banks failed. In 1931, the Bank of the United States in New York with two million dollars defaulted. When the bank defaulted, twelve million jobs were lost or 25 percent of the work force.

3. In 1931, 28,000 business closed doors, both private and corporate. Money was not circulating. When the banks closed people scourged for food. People were starving. At the same time wheat was being piled up and wasted. On the Texas Panhandle, two million acres had been turned to sod. The wheat came in at 250 million bushels. Farmers were desperate to pay debt, but slowly bleeding out, for every five dollars earn they lost one. Milk, pork, and cattle prices dropped correspondingly as people were unable to pay price and commodity bust transpired, too much supply and not enough paying customers.

4. In 1931, there were thirty-three million acres stripped bare in the southern plains. The market price was 50 percent the cost for the farmer to break even. Normally, this inefficiency would have resulted in default and supply drops, but debt and speculation allowed prolonged oversupply, further exasperating the condition.

5. A two year hit Montana and the soil turned to fine particles and started to roll, stir, and take flight. Wheat dropped to 19 cents a bushel - an all time low. Tens of thousands had their savings swept away. The US food Administration set a price guarantee for wheat that set off a stampede transforming the grasslands and the price controls created long-term shortages. However, American capitalism was in a deep freeze.

6. By 1932, nearly two-thirds of the farmers face foreclosure, for back taxes and debt. One in twenty were losing their land.

7. In a cashless society people lived off home industry: eggs laid in coups, vegetables grown in garden, pigs slaughtered for bacon, and cows milked to feed young and old. Water from windmills provide irrigation means.

8. The Argiculture College of Oklahoma reported in their state during the wheat bonanza, sixteen million acres was planted in wheat and thirteen million acres left to seriously erode and this was before the drought and calcification of the ground. Neglect of the land was a significant contributor to the dust bowls. Abandonment caused from sudden price drops, commodity distribution problems, and easy money entrapment forcing debt repayment behavior that exploit natural resources.

9. High temperatures during winter did not kill off many of the pests. Epidemic insect pollutions flourish: grasshoppers, spiders, and centipedes invaded every living space.

10. Sitting Bull had predicted the land would get it revenge on whites who forced the Indians off the grasslands. He saw doom from the sky.

11. President Roosevelt ended agricultural free market economics for good. Roosevelt said: America had produced more food than any country in history, and farmers were being run off the land, penniless, while the cities couldn't feed themselves. The average farmer earned three hundred dollars a year, an 80 percent drop in income from a decade earlier. Government would try to shape the price and flow of food, to force prices up. Roosevelt had the government buy surplus corn, beans, and flour, and distribute it to the needy. Over six million pigs were slaughtered, and meat given to relief organizations. The Welfare state was born. Under Roosevelt, government was the market. The Civilian Conservation Corps built dams, bridges, retains, roads, and lakes and ponds. Roosevelt signed a bill giving farmers two hundred million dollars to help farmers facing foreclosure. The Volstead act permited the sale of 3.2 percent beer.

12. By some estimates their were 80 million acres in the southern plains stripped of their topsoil.

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.

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.