The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time is the gritty story of the Dust Bowl that gripped the Plains in the 1930s. Like my friend Clio, whose own review convinced me I should add this book to my list, I was largely ignorant of the scope and magnitude of the Dust Bowl. Yes, it was very hot and dry and caused many people, like the famous Okies in The Grapes of Wrath, to head for California. I had never known or imagined, however, that in the areas most badly afflicted (and Steinbeck's migrants did not hail from the worst afflicted parts), when it rained, which it seldom did, the clouds dropped mud from the sky. Cattle and farm animals suffocated on the dust, scores of children and the elderly died of dust pneumonia, and a single storm could bring enough dust to bury an entire Model A Ford. Other storms were capable of traveling thousands of miles, flinging dirt onto the Capitol building in Washington, DC, and even onto ships hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic.

Timothy Egan does a masterful job of bringing these anecdotes to life and of introducing the reader to the individuals who lived in the Dust Bowl and helping us understand why they left or, harder to grasp, why they stayed. Egan also concisely explains the causes behind the Dust Bowl. These causes are a hard lot to follow. There are, of course, the railroads and railroad barrons, but more disturbingly is the federal government. Egan does not sugar coat that it was the federal government, in a fit of manifest destiny, that encouraged more and more settlers to take to the plains, to plow up the grass, to plant more wheat than the country needed, to take on ever greater debt, and so on, until it all collapsed with the onset of the Great Depression.

After years of indifference during the 1930s, the federal government finally took action, buying millions of acres of dusty fields to return to grass. Under the Civilian Conservation Corps, they also planted some 220 million trees in an attempt to anchor the land to itself. Today, Egan notes that "some of the land is still sterile and drifting," and a colleague in Colorado informs me that the devastating fires sweeping through her state are kindled in no small part by the trees that were planted during the Depression.

Overall, this is an incredibly interesting and well-written book, one that I would especially recommend for history buffs or avid readers. It's one of two books I loaded onto my mom's Nook before she left for Europe earlier this week, so I hope she'll enjoy it as well!