Rent The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Detailed and easily-readable history of one of our nation's worst times. A neglected history of our ancestors. Worthwhile reading.

It’s an intensively researched history of the experiences of the people who stayed in the 1930s Dust Bowl. It was fascinating. It was authoritative. It is THE Dust Bowl History Book. Egan interviewed as many survivors of the devastating agricultural event as were willing to speak to him. As a result, this history book is filled with personal stories of abject misery interjected with the hard facts: The political, the agricultural, the emotional. It’s quite a book. I don’t know about you guys, but the Dust Bowl event was mostly glossed over in school, even in college in history classes for non-history majors. Yeah, I knew wheat prices during WW1 soared and farming land that wasn’t a natural source of wheat production killed the prairie grasses. I knew those boom years during the war were the result of a few years of unusual rainfall. I knew people lost everything and moved away. I knew dust storms happened.What I didn’t know was that those dust storms were so severe, they reached New York City from Texas. That animals died and their stomachs revealed they were stuffed with dirt. That centipedes came and stayed. Most of all, I didn’t know people stayed, too. This book is heartbreaking. It’s about how communities rose and were dashed. How people suffered. How nature earth is always stronger than we are. I highly recommend it.

The devastating effect of farming and grazing on our natural plains and grasslands has not been extensively discussed as one of the greatest environmental mistakes this country has made and it should be discussed a great deal. the personal tragedies and heartbreak of the dustbowl, likewise, are something worth learning more about. This book really opening my eyes to a part of American history that I had heard only fleetingly about before.

Wow! Hard to believe we Americans were so stupid! This book was a fabulous tale of surviving a horrendous time in American history. Kudos to Timothy Egan for a story well told!