A review by drp_moonlight
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

2.0

The prose itself is mellifluous, but I found the substance lacking. A good 20% is spent on the ancestral backgrounds of some of the players of our story (I mean, going back to Catherine the Great!) and other details that didn't really add to the overall narrative. Did I need reiterating that the Volga Germans liked cleanliness every other chapter? Not necessarily. I was also disappointed by the lack of non-White perspectives. Sure there was mention of the Comanche being kicked out of their lands, of the Black folk jailed and threatened with death for daring to exist in these areas, and of the Mexicans also living in the land. But none of these groups ever joined our rotating cast of survivors.

Sidenote: I listened to the audio production by HarperAudio and I must say Jacob York did a damn good job