The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
This is a very important book for anyone who cares at all about American history and/or American political policy. It chronicles the dust bowl from when it was nothing but Comanche-owned grassland until the end of the 1930s. I never read THE GRAPES OF WRATH so this was all new to me.
As much as anything, this is a story of hubris leading to destruction. What was once one of the greatest grasslands in the world was stripped first of its bison, and then of its grass. As wartime shortages (and government support) made wheat prices rise, more and more “nesters” raced to the high plains to make their fortune. When wheat prices fell, desperate farmers stripped more and more of the grasslands to plant even more, and when the wheat market bottomed out, many of these farmers abandoned the land, leaving now-bare fields to blow away.
This story reminded me a lot of a story in Jared Diamond’s COLLAPSE, about the Scandinavian settlers in Greenland flaying the fields of sod, not realizing how fragile it was, and basically setting themselves on the path to inevitable starvation and ruin. The difference is that in this book, they are tied to stories of real people.
I don’t really recommend the audiobook from audible. Not because it was poorly performed, but because this is a book that cries out for photographs. I ended up googling for them, because not being able to see the photos was driving me crazy.
One of the points brought about by this book, besides just that the 1930s sucked, was how many of the FDR new deal last-ditch save-the-farmer subsidies are still in place today. Egan mentions this briefly, near the end. I wanted to hear more about how the prairie was restored, or if it was, and what the ecological state of the grasslands was (because I hate unhappy endings) but this book isn’t about that. The only resolutions it gives were for the people depicted in the story.
I recommend this for people who care about history.
