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A review by haley_j_casey
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
3.0
Okay, admittedly, I didn't read the whole thing. But I read A LOT of it, and I skimmed the rest, and I looked at the pictures, and it counts as having read it. Honestly, I read more than enough to get the gist.
I'm not a real big fan of nonfiction, and this is a serious nonfiction work. So it was already going to have a lower rating that fun fiction works. I couldn't decide whether this book deserved 2 or 3 stars, though, and finally it got 3 for the information it has. Because it is PACKED with Dust Bowl facts, stuff I would have never found or learned without the book and that are incredibly interesting. Stuff like Black Sunday, how far the dust storms spread, how East coast Americans didn't believe No Man's Land was experiencing a time as bad as they said they were, how ships 200 miles off the Atlantic coast were showered with dust from the Midwest plains. All that fascinated me.
The narrative was lacking, though. The author tried to tell too many stories about too many people in too many places all at once. He skipped around from city to family to newlywed couple, and would start out referring to them by one name and then, next time he came around to mention them, would use their surname only or a nickname, and it made the lives of the people he was showcasing kind of impossibly to follow. That was irritating.
Great info, poor story, interesting enough read. 3 stars.
I'm not a real big fan of nonfiction, and this is a serious nonfiction work. So it was already going to have a lower rating that fun fiction works. I couldn't decide whether this book deserved 2 or 3 stars, though, and finally it got 3 for the information it has. Because it is PACKED with Dust Bowl facts, stuff I would have never found or learned without the book and that are incredibly interesting. Stuff like Black Sunday, how far the dust storms spread, how East coast Americans didn't believe No Man's Land was experiencing a time as bad as they said they were, how ships 200 miles off the Atlantic coast were showered with dust from the Midwest plains. All that fascinated me.
The narrative was lacking, though. The author tried to tell too many stories about too many people in too many places all at once. He skipped around from city to family to newlywed couple, and would start out referring to them by one name and then, next time he came around to mention them, would use their surname only or a nickname, and it made the lives of the people he was showcasing kind of impossibly to follow. That was irritating.
Great info, poor story, interesting enough read. 3 stars.