The Worst Hard Time

History

Print length: 340 pagesHoughton Mifflin Co., 2006

Description

During the 1930s, families across the southern Great Plains watched fertile farms become fields of drifting dust. Timothy Egan follows several of these families and their communities as crops fail, blizzards darken the sky, homes become untenable, and illness and death test their determination to remain. Their experiences unfold within a larger history of agricultural expansion: grasslands were plowed for short-term profit, leaving exposed soil vulnerable when drought arrived. Drawing on survivors’ voices, Egan connects intimate accounts of hunger, displacement, and loss to the economic choices that intensified an environmental catastrophe. The result is both a social history of the Dust Bowl and an examination of endurance amid a disaster people helped create.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Descriptive · Journalistic

Pace

Moderate

Tone

Atmospheric · Bleak · Earnest · Tense

Structure

Braided · Chronological nonfiction

Focus

Atmosphere · Character · Information

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

CommunityGriefMigration and displacementNature and environmentSurvival

About Timothy Egan

Timothy Egan is an American author and journalist who formerly wrote opinion columns for The New York Times. Across ten books, he has used reporting and historical research to examine how institutions and public decisions affect individual lives, especially in accounts of the American West, environmental disaster, and political extremism. The Worst Hard Time draws on firsthand testimony to connect suffering during the Dust Bowl with farming practices that left the Plains vulnerable. Fever in the Heartland shows the Ku Klux Klan gaining power in Indiana by embedding itself in civic life and electoral politics. Egan’s character-centered narratives and concrete physical detail give human scale to broad historical forces. In 2013, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction recognized Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, his book about photographer Edward Curtis.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Language: English
ISBN: 9780618346974

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