The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl ― A National Book Award-Winning History of the Depression
About
Timothy Egans National Book Award winning narrative nonfiction (about 352 pages, for roughly age 14 and up) tells the Dust Bowl story through the lives of a dozen families who stayed on the High Plains through the 1930s. Drawing on survivor interviews, it captures the black dust blizzards, crop failures, and losses they endured, and stands as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of mistreating the land.
Why it’s great
What was it actually like to live through the worst environmental disaster in American history and refuse to leave? Timothy Egan's award-winning account follows a dozen real families who stayed on the High Plains through the Dust Bowl's black blizzards, failed crops, and heartbreak. Gripping and deeply human, it shows older readers both the human cost of the catastrophe and the hard truth about what happens when farming pushes the land past its limits.
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