The Worst Hard Time

So I finished up The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. It was an excellent look into the huge drought during the 1930's in the upper midwest; the area known as the Dust Bowl during that period. I liked this book, because unlike John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, it tells the true story of the people that stayed during that period, unlike Steinbeck's work of fiction that tells the story of those who fled.

I think anyone interested in history, especially American history, should pick up this book. I'm not a big history person, and for me at times it was a little bit hard to follow as there are several different families that the author tells the story of at the same time.

Overall though I thought it was a pretty good read, and it goes into great detail on the huge dust storms of that era which were rated by meteorologists as the greatest or most unusual weather phenomenon of the century...maybe even millennium (I don't remember.) The worst of these was called Black Sunday where so much dust was lifted off the ground that during the middle of the day, you could barely see your hand in front of your face. There were a few storms that even carried so much land that dust fell on the East Coast of the U.S. It also goes into the sicknesses that arose from inhaling all the dust, with the most prominent illness being called dust pneumonia, something which doctors had never really encountered before, except with people who worked in coal mines and such, but never with the general public.

Most interesting though is what caused the huge dust storms to take place. You'll have to read to find out.