The Worst Hard Time

The best history books thrill us by telling their story as if the outcome were not assured. This is one of those books. Convincingly read by Patrick Lawlor, Egan's book renders the environmental ravages and human drama of the 1930s' Dust Bowl in fascinating detail. Egan blends a myriad of individual stories with the political record to create a tale of greed, stupidity, heroism, and perseverance that keeps one from touching the stop button. Lawlor's somewhat nasal voice sounds right for the era, and he reads the straight history passages with energy and clarity. He also imbues the many individual voices, including those who appear but once, with enlightening character. This is a must-listen. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

Starred review from November 28, 2005
Egan tells an extraordinary tale in this visceral account of how America's great, grassy plains turned to dust, and how the ferocious plains winds stirred up an endless series of "black blizzards" that were like a biblical plague: "Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains" in what became known as the Dust Bowl. But the plague was man-made, as Egan shows: the plains weren't suited to farming, and plowing up the grass to plant wheat, along with a confluence of economic disaster—the Depression—and natural disaster—eight years of drought—resulted in an ecological and human catastrophe that Egan details with stunning specificity. He grounds his tale in portraits of the people who settled the plains: hardy Americans and immigrants desperate for a piece of land to call their own and lured by the lies of promoters who said the ground was arable. Egan's interviews with survivors produce tales of courage and suffering: Hazel Lucas, for instance, dared to give birth in the midst of the blight only to see her baby die of "dust pneumonia" when her lungs clogged with the airborne dirt. With characters who seem to have sprung from a novel by Sinclair Lewis or Steinbeck, and Egan's powerful writing, this account will long remain in readers' minds.