''The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl'' is an American history book written by ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' journalist

Timothy Egan Timothy P. Egan (born November 8, 1954) is an American author, journalist and op-ed columnist for ''The New York Times'', writing from a liberal perspective. Egan has written nine books. His first, ''The Good Rain'', won the Pacific Northwest B ...

and published by

Houghton Mifflin The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

in 2006. It tells the problems of people who lived through

The Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

's Dust Bowl, as a disaster tale. Egan and ''The Worst Hard Time'' won the 2006 National Book Award for Nonfiction"National Book Awards – 2006"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-02-20. and the 2006

Washington State Book Award The Washington State Book Awards is a literary awards program presented annually in recognition of notable books written by Washington authors in the previous year. The program was established in 1967 as the Governor's Writers Awards. Each year, u ...

in History/Biography. Egan attributes the Dust Bowl tragedy to reckless agricultural misuse of the land, and tells "vivid" and "poignant" stories about individual farmers and their families.

References

Bibliographic information

External links

Presentation by Egan on ''The Worst Hard Time'', January 16, 2006
Non-fiction books about the Great Depression Works about the Dust Bowl National Book Award for Nonfiction winning works American non-fiction books 2006 non-fiction books Houghton Mifflin books {{US-hist-book-stub