Egan, Timothy. The worst hard time; the untold story of those who survived the Great American Dust Bowl.

EGAN, Timothy. The worst hard time; the untold story of those who survived the Great Amebean Dust Bowl. Read by Patrick Lawlor. 10 cds. 12 hrs.Tantor Media. 1-4001-3220-7 $69.99. Vinyl; content, author notes. SA*

Like the fierce storm whipped up by Prospero in The Tempest, the Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930s was manmade. Sodbusters plowed up close to one hundred million acres of grassland and a drought followed by winds blew tons of topsoil across the American High Plains and as far east as Washington, DC. A quarter of a million people were forced to leave the land. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Egan captures the Depression-era drama with facts and figures, but more importantly by relating the lives of people who lived through the worst of times. Even small towns become characters that suffer and die, choked by dust. Part 1 covers the beginning of the problem from 1901 to 1930, when settlers killed off the bison and plowed up the prairie to plant wheat, fencing in the open range. Dishonest real estate brokers exacerbated the problem by selling dry land to suckers.

Part 2 covers 1931 to 1933. We meet Hazel Lucas, who ran a one-room schoolhouse with 39 students in eight grades. Eventually she married and had a baby who died of dust pneumonia. Ike Osteen, Barn White, and Doc Dawson suffered too, as did the German immigrants from Russia. Racism in Oklahoma, bank foreclosures, record-breaking heat of 115 degrees, and infestations of grasshoppers (14 million per square mile) and rabbits are recorded. President Hoover was ineffective and in 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected, promising the nation a New Deal. Part 3: 1934-1939 shows the agonizingly slow recovery of the High Plains, with cattle killed off and farmers paid to leave the land fallow. Egan concludes that the Dust Bowl was caused by hubris and ignorance on a grand scale.

Lawlor characterizes voices such as FDR and locals from Texas to Nebraska. He captures perfectly the anguish of the victims of the decade-long disaster. Highly recommended for its evocative power, its warning about abusing nature, and its paean to the abiding human spirit in the face of unimaginable hardship. Janet Julian, English Teacher (retired), Grafton, MA

S--Recommended for senior high school students.

A--Recommended for advanced students and adults. This code will help librarians and teachers working in high schools where there are honors and advanced placement students. This also will extend KLIATT's usefulness in public libraries.

*--The asterisk highlights exceptional books.