The Worst Hard Time

"This is can't-put-it-down history." -- Walter Cronkite Hurricanes Katrina and Rita serve as grim reminders of the destructive power of nature and the long-term effects of a single storm. In The Worst Hard Time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Timothy Egan brilliantly captures the untold story of the Dust Bowl, the decade of brutally punishing dust storms that ravaged the American High Plains during the Depression and became the most devastating weather event in American history, through the eyes of those who survived it. At its peak, the Dust Bowl covered close to one hundred million acres, and more than a quarter of a million Americans were forced to flee their ruined homes. Egan follows a diverse cast of individuals and families in communities across the affected region, weaving together the eyewitness accounts of survivors now in their eighties and nineties. Egan captures the full drama, heroism, and terror of this unwritten chapter of the Greatest Generation, a time when the simplest thing in life -- taking a breath -- was a threat. The Worst Hard Time is a testament to the power of human perseverance in the face of the most wretched of conditions, as well as a reminder that the environmental catastrophe of the Dust Bowl may be only a preview of what is in store for us in our ever-warming future. Timothy Egan, a third-generation westerner, is the author of Lasso the Wind, The Good Rain, and Breaking Blue. He has been a writer for The New York Times for the past fifteen years and was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for national reporting. He lives in Seattle. A 2006 National Book Award winner. An AudioFile Earphones winner and Audie Award Finalist, Patrick Lawlor is also an accomplished actor, director and combat choreographer. "Lawlor is masterful." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer