Hard Times

Timothy Egan's book The Worst Hard Time won the National Book Award in 2006. It chronicles not only the struggle to survive the dust bowl of the American Southwest in the 1930s, but also the social, economic, and environmental forces that led to the tragic phenomenon. Egan does a fantastic job of transporting the reader to a time and place so far away. This year's National Book Award finalists include a historical text as well, This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust. Faust explores the cultural consequences of the massive battle casualties in the American Civil War, from freelance embalming to misidentified corpses. Civil war casualties numbered 623,000, more than both World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined.

Steve - Main Library