The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

In the late 1920s, millions of acres of land in the Great Plains were torn up to plant wheat. The problem was, the land was not made for that kind of planting. As a result, the 1930s became a nightmare of dust storms that would bury cars and created enough static electricity to make human contact painful.

The Worst Hard Time is Egan's account of the the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. With all of the plains' grass plowed up, there was nothing to hold the land down. So when the winds came up, they took the land with them.

Using interviews with and documentation written by the people that stayed on the plains through the '30s, Egan is able to show readers the disaster as a whole and the toll it took on individuals.

This is a fantastic book. It is hard to read at times, but it sheds light on a part of American history that is often forgotten.