UW Alumni Authors

Timothy Egan, '81

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
By Timothy Egan, '81
Houghton Mifflin, 2005
 Buy this book online at University Book Store

Excerpt from the book:

"Dodge City went black. The front edge of the [dust cloud] looked two thousand feet high. Winds were clocked at sixty-five miles an hour. A few minutes earlier there had been bright sunshine and a temperature of eighty-one degrees, without a wisp of wind. Drivers turned on their headlights but could not see ahead of them, or even see the person sitting next to them. It was like three midnights in a jug, one old nester said. Cars died, their engines shorted out by the static. . . . There was a whiff of panic, not evident in earlier storms, as a fear took hold that the end was near. A woman in Kansas later said she thought of killing her child to spare the baby the cruelty of Armageddon."