His Book Review: The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (2006)

Why he read this book: Recommended by a history colleague

Would he recommend this book: Yes

His review: Exploring the relationship between humanity and the environment is fundamental to understanding our future. We can see this future, ironically, by looking to our past. Learning how our past actions have impacted the land, the air, and the water gives us a clear picture of what can happen again, if we continue on the same paths.

Egan’s book provides a stark picture of a time, in American history, when humanity’s impact on the land had a drastic impact on the overall environment. This impact circulated back to the very humans who started it, and resulted in a miserable, deadly life.

That life was in the Midwest during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Egan painstaking details this world where drought precipitates massive dust storms (felt even on the East Coast) and a daily life of battling the dirt. The irony that Egan makes very clear is that despite a history of drought, the United States promoted this as a land for agriculture, and through that agriculture achieve a bounteous future. When family after family took up this offer, and took till to the land, the Midwest was transformed. They ripped away the native grasses that held down the soil with minimal rain, and planted wheat and other crops. The rains came down, and the wheat rose up, until the market was overwhelmed and the prices by bushel dropped. They over-plowed the land, and when rains didn’t come, the dirt rose.

Egan uses a several individuals and several towns as our human connection to this environmental tragedy. We see their suffering with the constant dirt–they struggle to find food (eating tumbleweeds); fought to keep their lungs from being overwhelmed; and hoped tomorrow would bring rain. It is hard not question their judgement when they stubbornly refused to leave, taking to extremes the myth of rugged agrarian individualism. Homes and lives where lost and the land is still struggling to recover.

With so many stories to tale, Egan’s book becomes a bit muddy in its human connection. We certainly feel how they suffer with individual episodes, but it could be easy to lose track of linking the same character across chapters. As well, Egan doesn’t cover much of the long-term consequences of the Dust Bowl–how the land and people of the Midwest are today. But the story he tales is powerful, a story that each on page carriers a ominous premonition of future disasters when humans fail to understand their relationship to the land.