Audiobook Review: The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

This was one of my audio "reads" via the library's "similar books" feature. Not quite sure what it was similar to, except that I was probably looking at books about historical events. This is a look at the Dust Bowl that's a bit different from the usual, since this is about the people who *didn't* leave.

Title: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Author: Timothy Egan. Read by Jacob York

Publication Info: Audio book by Audible Audio, 2022. 13 hours. Originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 2005, 340 pages.

Source: Library

Publisher's Blurb:
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.

My Review:
Way back when I was in high school, we all had to read Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men or The Grapes of Wrath (or both). In that way we learned about the Dust Bowl--and what we learned was that people left. That was true in my own family--my uncle by marriage left Oklahoma as a boy in part of that great exodus. It's well-documented in song and story. What Egan has done is to depict the lives of those who did not leave.

I don't think I realized the extent and effects of the huge dust storms. In my mind, the issue was that the rain stopped, the soil blew away and so there were no crops. Cue poverty and foreclosures. Egan graphically reminds the reader that all that topsoil went somewhere. Mostly, it went in great dust clouds to pile up in drifts and dunes in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and the SE corner of Colorado. The drought was widespread through the prairie states, but the dust, as far as I can tell, was much the worst in that area. People left, in many cases, because to stay was impossible.

What the dust did, besides bury roads, farms, animals, fences, and hopes, was to kill people. "Dust pneumonia" was the official diagnosis--the dust got into the lungs, filled them up, irritated the heck out of them, and people died, unable to breathe. In particular, children and elders died.

Egan explains how the disaster was wholly man-made. As long as the native grasses covered the land, and the buffalo grazed in their usual way, passing through an area and moving on, the land could withstand drought. Moving off the buffalo and grazing cattle was a blow, but a small one by comparison with the one that happened when some very persuasive supporters convinced a nation that this desert could be a rich farmland. 

That was actually true--as long as the rains came and the price of wheat stayed high. I got the impression that the biggest harm came from the artificially high demand for and price of wheat during WWI, followed by the crash at the end of the 20s. When demand was high, huge areas of native grasses were plowed under, the ecosystem forever destroyed. When demand--and prices--fell with a vast thud, many speculators just walked away from that plowed land. With nothing growing on it, it blew. When rain didn't come, no one's crops grew, and it all blew the more. Enter the dust bowl.

That's the reportorial version. What Egan's book does is put faces and stories to the farmers who came and who struggled to stay on, some dying in the attempt, because their land was all they had and that desolate region was home. It's a painful story, and should be read, in my opinion, as a cautionary tale of what happens when we think we humans can control the environment.

My Recommendation:
Egan's books is a little long, but in general a fascinating read and a good thing to contemplate as we enter an era of disdain for the natural environment. There were a lot of threads to keep track of as an audio book, but in the end it all made sense.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2025    
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