The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
4.5 | 7,115 ratings
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Last update: 03-02-2026
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- EmreadsnstuffAn absolute must read!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. - Bryan CareyDust, Depression, and the Fight for SurvivalMost 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. - wh0izzitGreat Historical NovelThis is a fascinating book. I love learning about what actually caused the dust bowl and the history of that area too.
It's very well written.