The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl最艰难的时代

Starred Review. Egan tells an extraordinary tale in this visceral account of how America's great, grassy plains turned to dust, and how the ferocious plains winds stirred up an endless series of "black blizzards" that were like a biblical plague: "Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains" in what became known as the Dust Bowl. But the plague was man-made, as Egan shows: the plains weren't suited to farming, and plowing up the grass to plant wheat, along with a confluence of economic disaster—the Depression—and natural disaster—eight years of drought—resulted in an ecological and human catastrophe that Egan details with stunning specificity. He grounds his tale in portraits of the people who settled the plains: hardy Americans and immigrants desperate for a piece of land to call their own and lured by the lies of promoters who said the ground was arable. Egan's interviews with survivors produce tales of courage and suffering: Hazel Lucas, for instance, dared to give birth in the midst of the blight only to see her baby die of "dust pneumonia" when her lungs clogged with the airborne dirt. With characters who seem to have sprung from a novel by Sinclair Lewis or Steinbeck, and Egan's powerful writing, this account will long remain in readers' minds. (Dec. 14) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

TIMOTHY EGAN is a national enterprise reporter for the New York He is the author of four books and the recipient of several awardS ificluding the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Seattle Washington.

I PROMISE: The Great Plowup, 1901-1930
1.The Wanderer
2.No Man's Land
3.Creating Dalhart
4.High Plains Deutseh
5.Last of the Great Plowup
II BETRAYAL, 1931-1933
6.First Wave
7.A Darkening
8.In a Dry Land
9.New Leader, New Deal
lO.Big Blows
III BLOWUP, 1934-1939
11.Triage
12.The Lonu Darkness
13.The Struggle for Air
14.Showdown in Dalhart
15.Duster's Eve
16.Black Sunday
17.A Call to Arms
18.Goings
19.Witnesses
2o.The Saddest Land
21.Verdict
22.Cornhusker II
23.The Last Men
24.Cornhusker III
25.Rain
Epilogue
Notes and Sources
Acknowledgments
Index