The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl ― A National Book Award-Winning History of the Depression

Timothy Egan relates that it was a son of Kansas, Roy Emerson Stryker, who came up with the idea of creating a record of American decay for the files of the Farm Security Administration, and "...the government photo unit proved to be one of the lasting and most popular contributions of the New Deal..." Americans familiar with their history have the images taken by Walter Evans and Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression as part of their cultural baggage, and Egan expands that to the work of Arthur Rothstein, and others, who were just out of college, and told to stay in the "field", and get to know the people. The images of the immense ecological disaster that was dubbed "the Dust Bowl" are not properly honored with even the word "haunting." Egan has written a magnificent, heart-breaking history of the "the Dust Bowl" area during the `30's. Much of the specific history was new to me, and thus confirmed Truman's dictum that there is nothing new in the world except the history that you did not know. I had recently re-read Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," which Egan briefly touches upon, pointing out correctly that Tom Joad and his family came from eastern Oklahoma, whereas the true dust bowl encompassed only western Oklahoma. I felt Egan's one map, outlining where the area of the dust bowl was, most illuminating. Both Steinbeck's and Egan's books are damning indictments of so-called "market forces" unleashed without an overall structure of prudent rules set by society, as administered by the government. Egan did however cover the impudent rules that society and the government advocated, which encouraged the settlement and farming of the land west of the 100th meridian which was the root cause of the dust bowl. Egan tells the story of the worst hard times through the eyes of those who experienced it, via interviews with them, or their children, accompanied by surviving diaries and the newspaper stories of the day. He doesn't say how or why he selected certain people, but I felt that they were a representative sampling, from Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. Of the stories that were particularly memorable, I found the ones of the "Volga Germans" who settled in Shattuck, OK. They had been recruited by Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (who was actually German) to settle on the Volga river. They were given incentives to do so, like exemption from conscription. When these were removed, 150 years later, by Czar Alexander II, they left in mass, and settled in the USA. The epicenter of Egan's stories, and no doubt research, seemed to be Dalhart, Texas, in the northwest corner of the panhandle. The author starts his book with the story of Bam White, part Indian, whose horses could not carry his family any further south into Texas, so he had to stop in Delhart. Bam was in the most famous movie made about the dust bowl, and was shunned by much of the population of the area for this role. Another very memorable character from Delhart was the indominable promoter and newspaper editor, John L McCarty. He was a founding member of the "Last Man Club," pledging that they would never leave, a pledge that he broke, when "he got a better deal." I also found the stories of set in the Oklahoma panhandle, which was once called "no man's land" also quite illuminating. I read a few of the 1-star reviews, found their criticism of little merit. One did not like the endless stories about the dust storms, which I found a strength of the book. Egan explained well the whole trajectory of the area's residents from hope and defiance through resignation and defeat. As Egan says on p 242: "The problem with history was that it was written by the survivors, and they usually wrote in the sunshine, on harvest day, from victory stands." Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" was the catalyst for a trip to Garden City, Kansas a year ago, to see the feedlots there. Pollan declares that afterwards it would take "a supreme act of forgetting to ever eat meat again." On the way, I drove through Dalhart, and on the way back, I drove through Boise City, OK (named, as Egan points out, after the French word, "bois," for woods, of which there are none except in the fevered imagination of the real estate promoters.) I stopped in Keys, OK, and photographed the still extant devastation, the abandoned houses, and shuttered businesses. Egan's book will force a return trip, now that he has helped me "see" what I was oblivious too the last time. On last year's trip it was quite apparent that both the panhandles of OK and TX continue to struggle, yet the area around Garden City, KS seemed relatively prosperous. Sadly, Egan explains some of this in his epilogue: "So cotton growing, siphoning from the Ogallala (underground reservoir) get three billion dollars a year in taxpayer money for fiber that is shipped to China, where it is used to make cheap clothing sold back to American chain retail stores like Wal-Mart. The aquifer is declining at a rate of 1.1 million acre-feet a day... In parts of the Texas Panhandle, hydrologists say, the water will be gone by 2010." Plus ca change... Egan's book certainly deserves the National Book Award. An excellent, informative read.

Most Americans are familiar with the Great depression of the 1930s and most are at least somewhat familiar with the Great American Dust Bowl that swept the land at about the same time. However, few people truly know the full story, and this book, the Worst Hard Time, is ready to set the record straight. To say the Great American Dust Bowl was a problem limited to the inconvenience of a little dust blowing here and there is the understatement of the century. As this book explains, the dust bowl was immense in its impact, sending many people to an early grave and destroying thousands of lives. It was far worse than many people realize, and this book does a good job explaining the myriad of problems resulting from the dust bowl, how it happened, who was responsible, and who should be held accountable if something similar to this would ever happen again. Much of what you read in this book is shocking and you will likely come away from the reading with a newfound respect for clean air. Probably the most jaw- dropping was the fact that the sand and dirt from the dust bowl landed not just in the central U.S., but all throughout the eastern United States! Imagine living thousands of miles away from the central U.S, yet still having dirt and dust land on your home. Until I read this book, I never knew it spread this far. Or how about some of the zany things people were doing to try to get it to rain, like shooting explosives into the sky. Or the problems with dust pneumonia and constantly coughing and hacking from day to day. Or the issues with extreme static electricity. You likely never knew the Dust Bowl’s impact was this great. I like the way this book uses such vivid descriptions to explain situations. You feel the pain of the citizens and while you have likely never had to deal with air pollution of this magnitude, you can sense what it must have been like, based on the book’s descriptions. As I said before, I have never had such a strong appreciation for clean air until I read this book. We take clean air for granted, for the most part, but we need to be truly thankful for the air we breathe. America’s Dust Bowl was a harrowing time. The Worst Hard Time brings this era to life and serves as a valuable education lesson, showing what can happen when human ambitions are taken too far, and the earth is disrespected. It tells the Dust Bowl story, in vivid terms, filling the reader in on all the things that our history textbooks failed to mention.

This story could have been so depressing, that I might have put it down, lest I too, fall into despair. Yet, the writer has brought these unfortunate souls to life in such a way that I wanted to know their full story. I enjoyed especially the jargon and euphemisms from the people. Frequently sad, but oftentimes witty. A certain fatalistic humor. The research that was done was very enlightening, educational, and so interesting, that I started "Googleing" maps and histories of the plains. Much of it is sad, much is uplifting, a little made me angry, but mostly I found a lesson to be learned.

The book covers everything before and through the dust bowl, so it's a very good summary of everything that happened. All the people whose perspectives the author brings in add a ton to the story and make it more enjoyable, and they're humanized very well! They don't feel like regular fictional characters, they feel like actual people who were alive. The dusters are described really well too, they have a ton of character and you can feel the weight when one rolls in. They're described in such a tension raising way it feels like a threat when one appears. Overall a really good read and a great summary of what happened!

I'd heard of the dust storms that plagued The American Southwest in the 1930's, but I never knew the extent of the destruction until reading The Worst Hard Time. This book will educate you with the cause of the Dust Bowls as well as the aftermath. There's plenty of blame to pass around and perhaps it can be attributed to the greed and/or desperation of the farmers known as the nesters who pulled up the prairie grass to increase crop production. Then came draughts and wind. One unbelievable fact was how this dust ended up on the other side of the country, even in Washington D.C. This isn't a feel-good beach read. It's the story of families and individuals who suffered through immense struggles. I had to take short breaks from it because things just kept getting worse for these people and the future seemed hopeless. I often questioned why they stayed there when their houses were half buried and many became sick and died from lung ailments. As a community, they seemed willing to attempt everything such as shooting rockets at clouds to cause rain and the gruesome rabbit hunts. This is a very unique read. There's not a lot of topics like it and to think it happened in the United States is profound. The pictures in the book are also mind blowing. I would recommend it as you'll learn a lot but maybe read it in smaller doses.

This is the second time. I have read this incredible book. I bought it when it was first released, and now, during THESE times, I felt the need to read it again. It was available to read on my Kindle, so that made it an even easier decision. Timothy Egan brings to ...life?...a stunning and heart wrenching account of this period in America's history that has left me shaking my head in disbelief to this day. Mr. Egan managed to find one of the few survivors of this devastating decade, someone who was THERE. Many diaries and newspaper articles are included as well, but the writer's skill really lets us know how horrific this time was. One can almost feel and see the dust storms that, after a couple of years, were a DAILY occurrence. When I say "dust storm" that may conjure up and little twister weaving through the plains. Oh, no. These storms were massive, huge, and deadly. People who had moved to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas; to get a new start on life, and farm, to have something they could call THEIRS; well, I cannot imagine their suffering. I admire many of them for staying, but why did they? This area was called "No Man's Land", and that is exactly what it was .Banks refused to loan money to those who wanted to go there and farm. But never fear! The Homestead Act came along, and large tracts of land could be purchased for pennies. That land was not worth even that, but people bought it. This book goes into amazing detail about this time, you won't want to put it down. Egan writes the book with some main characters we get to know, then winds their nightmare story throughout the book, people come, people go, people choose to stay... When Herbert Hoover was president, at the beginning, farmers and their families did OK...too much wheat was grown, WW I had ended, and it "wasn't needed." But it was! No one would buy the wheat, so when Hoover was asked to help these people and buy some wheat, he said no. Unbelievable. Then, land that should never have been farmed in the first place turned on everyone and everything, rolling in from the southwest, so eerie and mind boggling that the National Weather Service had no name for it! Sadly, it was not a fluke, and things would only get worse. These massive "Dusters" as they came to be called, would arrive at any time of the day, one could not predict when, but they came. EVERY DAY. They were huge, dark, and horrific. Poor helpless animals died where they stood. People and their cars and houses had to be dug out of them. EVERY DAY for.....years! The Dustbowl covered 100 million acres, an area the size of Pennsylvania was ruined, and yet, only a third of the people left! When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected, he LISTENED. He begged people to stop trying to farm this land, and he sent an Agronomists and every expert you can imagine to this area: and what they discovered was not good news. Their report was given to the president, who felt so much for these people, and did what little he could to help. The land had been "farmed out", and it seems MAN was the cause of this catastrophe, not the weather. Man. The millions of Bison who had once roamed this area were now almost extinct. That was, of course, man's doing. So, with the Indians gone and the buffalo grass turned over by the "farmers", the soil poorly tilled or left abandoned, it was basically useless. You will not believe the trials these people who chose to stay endured. I kept thinking, "and we are complaint NOW?" The tenacity of the homesteaders, men and women, and their children, and their suffering and grief is heart wrenching. Personal accounts written by people who were there, gave me insight into what we would now consider absolutely intolerable. I would write more, but I'll let the reader discover how centipedes, spiders, dust, hunger, and worse, shaped the lives of the people in this area. This book should be on reading lists in high school. We today, have NO idea about this. Well, I didn't. Note: this is NOT a book about the Great Depression, even though these were Depression years. It's a book about men and women and land, and what happens when people decide to "make up their minds", and learn horrible lessons. Excellent, informative, and wonderfully written.

I loved the stories of the individuals and what they went through during this time. There were many names I recognized who were friends of my parents and grandparents. I've personally met most of the James brothers, for example. The author's take of them is pretty straightforward and accurate. What I did not like about the book were the assumptions, placement of blame, and conclusions the author liberally sprinkled throughout the narrative. Many of them could have been written by Al Gore, they were so far to the left. It was obvious the book was written by someone who's never lived in this part of the country, and has no understanding of the mentality, pride, and roots nor any idea how the people think, deep down. In this regard, the book is like reading a history of African-American culture written by a white man. Something is missing. Something important. The author is also wrong on some facts. One glaring fact is in the Epilogue: He says the population of Dalhart never recovered from the Dust Bowl days. However, by 1943, the population of Dalhart was over 20,000 (three large B-17 training bases had been built around the city for WWII). The city is not a "windswept dog-eared town", as he calls it, but a thriving and beautiful town. It makes me seriously wonder if he has ever visited the city the author wrote so much about. The story has a lot of holes...it is very much incomplete, but this isn't unexpected for a book of this type...there is too much history to cram into a readable book if one wanted to cover it all. But I would like to have seen some additional communities and events covered in brief, to give a fuller picture of what times were like in those days. My dad was born in Boise City, OK in 1932, in the heart of the Dust Bowl. I know quite a few stories told first-hand that would have increased the value of this book, but again, not everything can fit that needs to fit. I suppose that's one of the biggest problems an author of a cultural history faces. I recommend the book for those who want some of the story of the days and events of the time, but you'll have to wade through the politicisms and greenish worldview at times. Three stars might be a bit harsh; three-and-a-half is more accurate. But I don't think I can give it a four.

My emotions ran a negative gamut as I read this book, from anger at the lies and corruption of past leaders that created the possibility for this disaster (the removal of the gold standard and the horror of manifest destiny), to disgust at the ignorance, arrogance, and greed of the wheat farming nesters, to helpless despair over the state of the world that brought the Russian Germans over to the New World, to survivor's guilt that any one of these families could have just as easily as a roll of the dice been mine. I was appalled at the way Blacks, Jews, and Natives... especially the Natives... were regarded and baffled that we've, depending on point of view, come no further or even regressed. I was sickened at the suffering of the farm animals and the wildlife, at the way we upended an ecosystem so devastatingly and so thoroughly in no time, at how we collectively have learned nothing and have insisted on having our way with that land and are now draining the Ogallala aquifer in the name of corporate agriculture. Learning about the abject failure of possibly the most economically liberal president made me wonder how anyone could possibly hold laissez-faire capitalism as any kind of transcendent standard. We have no idea just how rich and protected we are. I gained an appreciation for FDR, and I understand why he's considered one of the greats, even as our subsequent leadership has convoluted, appropriated, reimagined, and abused the policies so necessary to even begin to attempt to not only right our egregious wrongs but to save those of us who unwittingly committed them. It was hard not to be angry with them, not to feel they did it all to themselves, and to feel that this is why we can't be trusted with the amount of freedom we fancy ourselves so entitled to. Finally, I felt shame, shame for inhabiting this land and shame for my complicity in... in what... in existing on this land and this odd, sad confusion because I really don't know how I can justify my very presence here. How do I fix my part in all this? And what did my grandparents' farm look like in its natural state, before all this group of homesteaders descended on a much more inhabitable, forgiving part of the country? I had to, and by the end of the book, it was sort of involuntary, but I had to suspend my derision and contempt of the humans, the individuals and families, in these dust bowl stories, because my heartbreak and shame and anger and pride and will to live is theirs, as much as it can be, when their decisions and their suffering of the consequences of those decisions paved the way for me to sit in air conditioned, well clothed, nourished comfort. Someone, please tell me how to reconcile any of this, because I am truly at a loss; a gilded, privileged, shameful loss.

Brilliant book ,and goes into great detail ,especially with the diaries of those who suffered . About a people who went to new lands in the hope of making a new and fresh start . But with a lack of farming knowledge of the area ,,some greed , ending up in a man made disaster .Native American Indians who had been thrown off their lands ,after another broken treaty ,had managed this land for thousands of years ,and knew the weather and natural cycles and were able to adapt .The knew breed of farmer was doomed ,once the first sod was turned over ,and on top of this greed set in with a lot of them ,when the Government encouraged them to grow as much grain as possible during the first world war . When things went belly up ,after borrowing from banks for machinery ,cars, houses, etc, disaster followed with the Dust Bowl of the 30's .People couldn't pay back ,,banks collapsed all over the area ,and evictions . It seems we still haven't learnt from the past ,with banks collapsing and evictions all over and no respect for nature . A book ,very well written ,with food for thought ..

We are fantastically ignorant when it comes to nature. We think we can do whatever the hell we like. This is proof that we can’t, shouldn’t and mustn’t.

We have all heard of the Dust Bowl in school but never in a way that showed the suffering, land destroyed and anguish that these people suffered. How foreclosures and lost economy destroyed not only land but the people themselves who came to settle on their own land and lost everything. This book will make you realize what a huge disaster it was and help to understand the minds of pioneers and the hardships they endured. Really awesome historical book.

Desde hace años me intrigó conocer más sobre el Dust Bowl, sus orígenes, características, lo que ocurrió y por supuesto el desenlace. Este libro es muy probablemente la más completa historia del mayor desastre ecológico en la historia de Estados Unidos, ocurrido además, en el contexto de la Gran Depresión. Muy recomendable, de principio a fin.

I don't know about you, but I knew very little about the Dust Bowl before reading this book. I didn't know that the dust storms had been the consequence of a disastrous combination of prolonged drought and soil erosion caused by reckless farming. Timothy Egan's tells the story of how it all started and how how it was allowed to happen through survivors' testimonies, made personal by the presence of great real-life `characters' - the town magnate, the school teacher, the cowboy and many more. The subject matter is heavy going but Egan turned it into a compelling read. It is worth noting that this is the book upon which Ken Burns' documentary Ken Burns - The Dust Bowl [Region 2 UK Version] [DVD ] is based. If you are planning to watch the DVD too, it's worth reading the book first and treat the DVD as a companion to it rather than the other way around. Otherwise your reading experience will be somewhat spoiled by knowing in advance the fate of those people, who survived, who left, who made it, who gave up. `The Worst Hard Time' isn't a novel, but it certainly makes you care for its protagonists. It's hard to believe that the Dust Bowl was one of the biggest man-made environmental catastrophes of modern times; and it's even harder to believe that it's no longer talked about. This book should be a compulsory reading for all politicians who still consider the earth's resources as a commodity to be plundered and exploited in the name of human greed.