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Summary Of The Worst Hard Time By Timothy Egan

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The book “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan gives an in-depth perspective on the survivors of the Dust Bowl. Timothy Egan is a journalist and has authored other historical novels, including “The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America.” Egan wanted to show what the Dust Bowl was like for the people that lived in the Great Plains when it occurred. I chose this book because I have always been interested in the Great Depression and the events around and during it. “The Worst Hard Time” is a slightly biased, thorough retelling of the lives of people living through the Dust Bowl. Timothy Egan writes for the New York Times, the national correspondent and opinion columnist. “The Worst Hard Time” won the 2006 National Book Award. …show more content…

This is an example of one of his primary sources because it is taken straight from the day Egan is writing about during the chapter. An example of a secondary source Egan used in the same chapter is from the No Man’s Land Museum in Oklahoma, which he visited to gather information. In chapter 8 “In a Dry Land” he cites the Dawson’s book, which is one of the families he narrates throughout the story. This is an interesting primary source directly written by one of his subjects, whose life Egan follows. Egan is qualified to write this historical novel because he has taken the time to gather his facts and stories from multiple different sources, giving him a well-rounded understanding of the Dust Bowl and the people he chose to write about. Timothy Egan wrote “The Worst Hard Time” as a story with facts spread throughout. Certain chapters explore background information and become the basis for future chapters or future stories he mentions. The book is organized in chronological order starting in 1901 and ending in 1939. There are three parts to the book, each explains and retells a time period during the Dust …show more content…

He also claims the dust coming to major cities is karma for not helping the people in the Plains sooner. The text also states, “One man suggested laying asphalt over the prairie. Another idea was to ship junked cars to the southern plains, where they would be used as weights to hold the ground in place. At least on the Eastern seaboard, the dust came and went like a snowstorm, and then the normal seasonal fluctuations resumed.” Egan shows how the people in the cities were only willing to think of ideas to make the dust stop blowing when it started to affect them. People in the city also stopped giving suggestions once the dust left their cities. The seasons in the Plains were different to the ones in the cities because the dust controlled how much sun and heat, they would be getting. He is biased against the people living in the cities because he characterizes them as ignorant and selfish, even though some people in the city probably did care and knew of the problem that has been going on in the Great Plains for two years. The novel, “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan, gives a detailed retelling of the Dust Bowl and the people that lived through

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Dust Bowl, The Southern Plains in the 30’s written by Donald Worster and published in 1979, is an informative text on the Great Plains during the Great Depression. Donald Worster is a credible author because he not only earned a Ph.D. from Yale in environmental history, but he also had previously written a book on the environment and the economy. This book was written well and Worster did a good job of revealing how people and how they live have effected the areas environment. He spoke of places including, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and many more.

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The author, Donald Worster, wrote Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in 1930s to tell not only about the devastating years between 1929 and 1939, but his own recent thoughts on the land and how people interact with it. He talks on the state of the plains today and the scary threat of another dustbowl. He reflects on solutions such as “the Buffalo Commons,” in which antelope, deer, and bison would once again roam freely. This story tells about one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in history that was faced by North America’s Great Plains.

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The dust bowl was considered the “Worst hard time” in american history. The Dust Bowl was a big cloud of dust that took place during the 1930’s in the middle of the Great Depression. The dust bowl was located in the southern great plains as it affected states like Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The three main causes of the Dust Bowl were drought (Doc E), amount of land being harvest (Doc D), and the death shortgrass prairie (Doc C).

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The article What we learned from the Dust Bowl: lessons in science, policy, and adaptation, provides an insight on the effects of Harvest Gypsies’ publication. The article names the Dust Bowl era “the worst hard time.” This article has an emphasis on not only human hardships but also on how the dust bowl climate contributed to the era and the hardships associated with it. I found the connection between climate and migrant workers to be an interesting comparison. The article explains that during the worst years of the Great Depression, large areas of the North American Great Plains experienced severe, multi-year droughts that led to soil erosion, dust storms, farm abandonments, personal hardships, and distress migration on scales not previously seen.

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In the 1930‟s and years to follow, a lot of people in the U.S felt the hardships that had been caused by the “Great Depression”. Families in the Plains, a term used to refer to the areas near Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas, were hit hard by the Dust Bowl, to make matters even worse, Dozens of “dust storms” obliterated people's crops , for some the only source of money. Millions upon millions of acres of land became full of dust that the soil was not suitable for the growth of food anymore. This made life even more difficult for the people in this region because their homes, the only places they have ever known, had become ruined and torn down due to the sheer amounts of dust. This setback had caused a lot of people to pack

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The Dust Bowl was a devastating environmental disaster that occurred during the Great Depression. Severe drought coupled with poor agricultural practices in the Great Plains resulted in massive dust storms that darkened skies and destroyed crops and homes. This disaster had a significant impact on the quality of life for people living in the affected areas. The dust storms caused not only problems to the surroundings but to the people as well, as many suffered respiratory and eye problems making it difficult to breathe or see. This coupled with the fact there was no healthcare due to the market crash it was very difficult for people to get the help they needed.

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The story starts off by telling you to imagine what it’d be like to live in the 1930’s when the Dust Bowl had taken effect. When dust storms came everyone in the area had to prepare quickly to withstand them. The wind combined with the dust and gravelly dirt was very strong and loud, easily getting into houses and cutting off fresh oxygen. Dust storms of the 1930’s were supposedly one of the worst natural disasters. They had affected everyone and everything in the area, so many Migrated West.

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The dust bowl is very serious. “But in the summer of 1931, the rains disappeared. Crops withered and died. There had always been strong winds and dust on the Plains, but now over plowing created conditions for disaster. There was dust everywhere, because the people couldve worried about others than themselves.

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Furthermore, The Worst Hard Time influenced my opinions and curiosity about American history, and makes me ask questions like “Why were things like the Dust Bowl swept under the rug even though they are important topics?” and “What other events like the Dust Bowl were not given any attention?” However it did not change my opinion about America since it gave me no sense of nationalism, but it did change my feelings on the American people, how they are determined to pursue their goals and determined not to lose what they already

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