During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the dust bowl that engulfed areas of Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas created hardships and devastation. This book tells the stories of those who stayed on the land and lived through it. In what seems like a series of biblical plagues, settlers who had come to the area just a few years earlier, and experienced a period of prosperity and success faced dust storms, insect hordes, crop failures, and dust pneumonia that took many lives.
During one storm, twice the amount of dirt that was removed to dig the Panama Canal blew away. The dust bowl was one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. This book will really make you think about what it means to experience hard times.

I enjoyed this book. I have family in the region and have been there numerous times. There truly are amber waves of grain.

Anyone who questions the impact that man can have on the climate only has to look back to the early part on the 20th century to see just how much damage man can have on the environment.

This book about the Dust Bowl of the 1930's examines the impact that man had, when great swaths of land were ripped away by the wind and blown across the country.

Though more a history of events surrounding the cataclysm, which coincided with the Great Depression, and an examination of the people who lived through it, the book does delve into environmental issues by explaining the series of events that led to the ground drifting away.

Beginning with the Homestead Act, the dry lands, once home to Native Americans and bison, began to be heavily farmed. A series of natural and unnatural events led to the great dust storms and effectively killed the land.

Though repetitive in places (all the families seemed to have the same or similar stories, no matter what state they called home), it's a great, though terrifying, read which should act as a warning to current and future generations of the impact that man can have on our environment.

This is a lot of information but was what I was looking for as I knew almost nothing about the dustbowl era. Another timely read in light of climate change.

The Worst Hard Time chronicles the lives of hopeful settlers who sought their own manifest destiny in the Great Plains of America in the late 1920’s-1930’s. This was promised to be the next great American expansion and an opportunity to lay down roots and farm this barren land. These brave souls not only had to deal with the fallout from The Great Depression, but also the aftermath of what happens when a landscape is changed to suit the perceived needs of man. The American plains were annihilated by never before seen weather events that pulled centuries of top soil into the air and created dust storms that blacked out the sun, caused static electricity that shorted out vehicles and killed countless animals and men. Welcome to The Dust Bowl.

This was a bleak, depressing and eye-opening read. I was surprised at how many parallels I observed between the political and social climate of the times leading to the Depression to Today. This book serves as a reminder as to of what can happen when man attempts to change the landscape of Earth and ignores the warning signs nature sometimes is kind enough to provide. A recommended read, but have another humorous happy book with pictures of puppies and kittens nearby to keep yourself from falling into your own great depression.

This book is the story of people who lived in the midwest at the turn of the century through about 1940ish. Reading this book made me realize that we haven't learned our eco-lesson in the slightest. Moreover, books like the Grapes of Wrath DO NOT give a full sense of the devastation of the land from North Dakota down to the Texas Panhandle. In some areas, within four years all bison and natural grass had been ripped from the ground. The land were sterile, into a great American Desert, from what had been a bread basket. The result were dusters that caused people to die of Dust Pneumonia, animals to die of starvation with stomachs filled with dust at autopsy, and created dust storms that were 500 miles high and hundreds of miles wide that would sweep through the nation. For instance, when some environmentalists of the time were speaking in Washington about the devastation, one of these dust storms that had sweep the mid-west crossed into NYC, DC, and the entire eastern seaboard blacking out the sun completely. We cannot envision this level of devastation, it's beyond comprehension, and yet there was no doubt it was human actions that destroyed the lands.