“The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Edgar

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The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Stories of Those Who Survived the Greatest American
Dust Bowl

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Book: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Stories of Those Who Survived the Greatest American Dust Bowl
Author: Timothy Edgar
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Year published: 2006
‘The Worst Hard Time’ is a classic disaster story of endurance and finding hope almost where there is none; it is a fascinating narrative of tricksters, ignorance, environmental egotism and political deception. This story is written by Timothy Egan who was born in the month of November year 1954 in Seattle, United States. The National Book Award winner is has written seven books and is a journalist who is now an opinion column writer in The New York Times.
In this book, Edgar brings to light the experiences of the people who lived through the hardest economic depression that has ever been experienced in America and its worst weather event. We are introduced the central characters in the book known as the nesters who were farmers in Oklahoma and Texas and who felt the wrath of the 1930’s Dust Bowl storms. In the book, Edgar follows the lives of a few of the families and communities that lived then through the rise and fall of the region. He explains how advice on good farming methods and avoidance of ploughing was ignored and how it led to the disaster in that period. Edgar goes ahead to explain how the events of this period led to laying of waste to the richest ecosystem in the world.
In the book, he gives vivid descriptions of how this people moved from one home to another trying to escape the harshness of the weather, he tells of the clustering in basements with every opening sealed with damp sheets in an effort to keep out the dust. Edgar follows on the desperate moments that these people had and the desperate attempts that they made to carry on even through crop failures and death of their loved ones to diseases, hunger and other calamities that they faced during this time. One cannot help but notice the acute powers that the actions and ignorance of the people contributed to the Dust Bowl and he also blames the government for allowing settlers to plough and clear lands to keep cattle.
Edgar uses a combination of clear investigation and warm compassion to portray the men and women who lived during this period and its miseries. To a great extent, this book can be described to be dramatic in the way that Edgar vividly brings out the characters and the events of the weather to life. Most parts of the book are thrilling, but he is able to trip himself up with terminated outrage restatements of superlatives for instance where he describes the high plains as the best grassland in the world. Edgar chooses not to follow on the where the people who left went to but rather focused on the reasons why the people who remained chose to stay despite all this problems. Edgar chooses to move away from his inventive descriptions that are filled with wonder of the landscape and goes to a rather pure bluster type of description where he now sees the landscape as a just a perfect fit for a big zone of rough winds and intolerant sun.
This is an earnest informative book which is full of liveliness, empathy and research on the ecosystem. It provides the optimum mental workout for individuals who need to extend, fortify and broaden their thinking about human relationships to the environment.