Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story Of Those Who Survived The Great American Dust Bowl

Remember the cloud of dust and debris that raced through lower Manhattan on September 11th? Imagine a cloud millions of times larger and thicker, moving at hurricane velocity, engulfing town after town in a choking darkness, shooting static electricity in all directions: such was The Great Duster of Palm Sunday, 1935, thereafter known as Black Sunday on the American High Plains. Timothy Egan's account of the Dust Bowl of the Thirties, based on extensive interviews with survivors of that massive ecological catastrophe, makes for sobering reading in this age of tsunamis, looming pandemics, and insufficient heed paid to the consequences of global warming.

John Steinbeck�s The Grapes of Wrath described the settlers of the �dust bowl� who left. This is the heroic story of those who remained. A beautifully written and intensely researched book about the settlement and disaster of America�s high plains.

The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since.
Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect” (New York Times).

In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is arguably the best nonfiction book yet” (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of trifling with nature.

The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since.
Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect” (New York Times).

In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is arguably the best nonfiction book yet” (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of trifling with nature.

TIMOTHY EGAN is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and the author of six books, most recently The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Washington State Book Award. His previous books include The Worst Hard Time, which won a National Book Award and was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice. He is an online op-ed columnist for the New York Times, writing his "Opinionator" feature once a week.He is a third-generation Westerner and lives in Seattle.

　

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Distributor: Houghton Mifflin Company
Publication Date: 09-01-2006
Pages: 352
Measurements: 8.25in X 5.50in X 0.75in X 0.76lb