The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
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Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and leader Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the dust storms that terrorized America’s High Plains during the Depression.
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Let me preface this by adage that I like 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 place the book down and forget about it, but I kept hoping that it would get better. It didn’t.
This book sucks. It was dreadful; 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 appealing, but most of it was mind-numbingly dull. Egan went into fantastic (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 hard to keep the different families, individuals and cities straight, especially since many of their tales 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 tales; it would have made the book more engaging. He hopscotched between families, communities, politicians, and individuals constantly, building the book more hard to read and appreciate.
It says it is “can’t-place-it-down history” on the take in, but that is a perfect lie. I honestly can’t judge I finished it, it was so dull and I factually 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 tale of the dust bowl is fascinating, so I was extremely disappointed with this book.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This was easily one of the worst books I have ever read! From the moment I opened this book it ongoing to place me to sleep. Many people may reflect “Oh, it will pick up later.”, but it does exactly the opposite! If you need something that will help you fall asleep better then I do recommend this book. You will be interested in this book if you are interested in investing an afternoon to reading a history textbook about a time that reasonably frankly was forgotten and rightfully so was.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
An over hyped political/enviromental fluff piece wrapped in the guise of a past text. No serious thought is agreed to the past subect matter, only deftly written jabs at ‘uninformed settlers, swindling politicians and failed farm policy.’ Pass on Timothy Egan if you are looking for a work of past value, read if you are easily swayed by hyper, sensationalized, offhand, journalistic writing.
And for crying out loud, Follett and Darrouzett, Texas need to be flipped on your ‘map’ and “No Man’s Land” is the entire Oklahoma panhandle, not just the western part as your book states.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This account of one of the worst environmental disasters to hit this country, next to the “Andrea Gail’ in 1938 is well done but a small dull. Since I was not born before it happened, what I thought was appealing rumor has it that was not what the censor thought, so here we go again. My sister remembered the Depression as she was eleven years older than I and said that even here in Knoxville, Tennessee, we were hit hard. Richard Marius, as a young professor at the University of Tennessee, wrote a fictional account about a drought which took place just out of this area. I read that book and was amazed at the consequences of a long drought and the effect it has on the humans and animals, day lacking end and no rain in sight. A drought is one thing, but the catastrophe of the Dust Bowl in the places this leader focuses on brings home the death and desolation of not only the dustballs swirling around like so much sagebrush, but the hurt caused by the swarms of insects; the grasshoppers would eat a whole meadow and strip it clear in a fleeting amount of time. I heard a address at the History Center of a man who endured the Dust Bowl and the Depression. It was no picnic.
The homesteaders out on the Fantastic Plains were lured into planting wheat, but Kansas was the only place it took hold. The plow-up of the thick grassland, where the buffalo roamed, in the Twenties; thus, the farmers of the High Plains out West “shattered the natural world of that area, not anticipating the possibility of a lingering drought. With no top soil or grass to keep the planet intact, the battle to plant wheat prompted by the government for gobal consumption proved to be ill-fated and the unsuspecting settlers ruined the native environment.
The dusters, called ‘black blizzards’ followed swarms of birds trying to get out of the way of the mile-high wall of dirt. The worst one took place in 1935, but the phenonomen went on for another four years. This book is divided into three sections, from 1901 to 1939. The government had lured inexperienced farmers to that excellent-for-nothing land which stretched into infinity (lots of space and emptiness on that flatland), who knew nothing of the dangers of tampering with scenery. In this area, a group came over from England to be gentlemen famers in a failed project called Rugby. They were educators and intellectuals, as opposed to persons in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and knew next to nothing about crops, droughts, harvests, and such. They were the precursors to the hippies as they sought to have a communal lifestyle here in East Tennessee. The effects of the Dust Bowl reached this state but not to the extent of persons who caused it with long-term consequences which would really alter their meager lives for the worst. It’s a marvel anyone survived, but he establish some to interview. If their memories were like the people who survived the Fantastic Hurricane in New England in 1938, part of it is fiction. But, when written by a newspaper reporter, there are permanently elaborations to make things sound better. This, I reflect, is one of them. He also wrote THE GOOD RAIN and LASSO THE WIND, leading up to the Dust Bowl which is honestly new — just out and many have establish it already.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
An eye opener to say the least. From what the whites did to the American Indians and the buffalo, (not to mention the land it’s self) I can not feel sorry for persons people and was secretly glad to see how the planet rose up in their defense. I saw karma at it’s best and there is more to come because we have not learned our lesson yet. We have defaced the whole planet in our mindless greed and I reflect the “dust bowl” days were just a tiny taste of what’s to come.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5