On the other hand, I truly appreciate Egan's significant research about a people and a region that has often been overlooked by historians. It’s so bad that I almost stopped reading it within 15 minutes of starting it. Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time is probably the best worst book I’ve ever read. 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 reminder about the dangers of trifling with nature.Įxcellent history ruined by Egan's bias & cynicism Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he 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).

Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award-winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows.

Dust bowl the worst hard time