Staff Book and Media Recommendations

The book chronicles the settling of the last American frontier: the high plains of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, Texas and Oklahoma.  This land was previously unsettled by Europeans, and when the native buffalo was killed off and the price of wheat rose after WWI, this area became prime real estate.  Settlers and investors moved in eager for a chance at land ownership and easy money.  They moved in and with the use of new mechanized farming techniques, tore up the native prairie, exposing the fertile topsoil to the relentless wind of the plains.  Life was good for the first few years until a drought settled over the area and the winds continued to blow.  Despite protests from some ranchers and others who were familiar with this unique ecosystem, the new settlers plowed up more and more land, creating one of the biggest man-made ecological disasters of the 20th century.  By the 1930’s the dust storms began and stripped the land of the valuable topsoil killing both people and livestock.  Some left their now fallow farms, but many remained simply because they had no other alternative or place to go.  Egan’s book chronicles the stories of the survivors that hunkered down and waited out the years of dust storms, unemployment, poverty, and hunger.

The Worst Hard Time tells these stories through a series of interviews.  It is readable literary fiction that puts human faces and stories to people who actually lived through the Dust Bowl.  It is a strong testament to the resilience of people who had to live through this difficult time.  The United States government did not directly cause this disaster, but it did encourage the decimation of the buffalo, the migration of the settlers to the high plains, and the unsustainable farming practices that brought about this catastrophic event.