Timothy Egan The Worst Hard Time Analysis

A person’s relationship with history is very much like their relationship with brussel sprouts: you either love ‘em or you hate ‘em, with most people identifying with the latter. As we are told countless times, history is important because if we forget it, we are doomed to repeat it. It is a logical claim, for how can someone learn and move forward if they do not reflect and fix their mistakes? History, however, has a tendency to be boring, a never-ending waterfall of dates and names that can only be learned through mind-numbing memorization.
Is this truly the only way, however? If we all agree that history is so important, how else can we teach future generations about humanity’s past? Timothy Egan’s book, The Worst Hard Time, provides an

Sure, the section on the dust bowl might mention that farmers planted too much wheat and allowed the soil to erode and get picked up by the wind, but it doesn’t go into why the farmers started planting so much wheat in the first place. A historian might decide to write a more in-depth book to ameliorate that problem, but unless someone is intentionally looking for more information, that book will not be read and the root cause of the disaster will be forgotten. Egan bridges the gap between the uninterested reader and the in-depth explanation with his continuing anecdotes. Instead of starting the book in the middle of the worst dust storm, he spends the first seven chapters explaining what happened beforehand, from when the first settlers came to No Man’s Land in search of free land until the first “duster” occurred. In between, he walks you through each farmer’s decisions amid previous choices and their consequences. This approach highlights the logic that the farmers followed at the time and stops you from condemning their actions in hindsight. Back then, these farmers thought they were doing the right thing. Without what we know now, would you have been able to do

Its message and its methods, however, are still relevant today. Egan’s use of anecdotes is an effective means to get history to people who are not actively seeking to learn. He broadens the opportunity that his book will be given a chance, educating more of the population about an oft-forgotten natural disaster caused by mankind’s reckless usage of the earth’s finite resources. This topic is more prevalent than ever right now, where we find ourselves realizing that we are once again recklessly using natural resources that are causing us to hurtle swiftly towards our own imminent destruction. Now would be a good time to remember the past, lest we repeat it