The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

 genre: non-fiction, history

A great friend of mine recommended this book on The Dust Bowl to me and I now know why.  While I have read about the Depression and I've read a couple novels about this time period, I have to admit that as I read I realized I knew essentially nothing.  I didn't know why the dust storms happened, I didn't understand the far reaching consequences and I didn't understand HOW LONG the people in this area of our country suffered.  I didn't understand the way that speculators, homesteaders and the government alike made choices to destroy our nation's topsoil in a way that still has consequences today, decades later.  This is a story of how man created a natural disaster and it's terrifying.

I didn't do well at keeping individuals and families separate in my head, I had to let that go and appreciate the general reality that life was hell for EVERYONE.  The dust was EVERYWHERE and impacted EVERYTHING even if you were not a person who ever plowed up a single square foot of prairie grass.  While it is a bit repetitive sometimes, this book really drove home to me the way that human decisions can literally change our planet. And that if we aren't careful, we might actually break our planet for good.  This is depressing history but also really engaging writer.  I've found myself talking to everyone about the Dust Bowl now - and I'm not sorry.