
The Worst Hard Time
The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
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Narrated by:
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Jacob York
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By:
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Timothy Egan
About this listen
In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award-winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows.
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect” (New York Times). In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is “arguably the best nonfiction book yet” (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful reminder about the dangers of trifling with nature.
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By: David McCullough
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The Longest Road
- Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
- By: Philip Caputo
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Philip Caputo, who had just turned 70, his wife, and their two English setters took off in a truck hauling an Airstream camper from Key West, Florida, en route via back roads and state routes to Deadhorse, Alaska. The journey took four months and covered 17,000 miles, during which Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are really about in the 21st century.
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Very Disappointing
- By Amazon Customer on 03-25-18
By: Philip Caputo
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The Meadow
- By: James Galvin
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
In short vignettes, Galvin gives us a deeply personal portrait of the people who lived in a mountain meadow along the Colorado-Wyoming border over its hundred-year history. His portraits illuminate the Western character and evolve a sense of place like no other.
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Reading the Meadow is almost like reading a poem..
- By Shelby Stephens on 04-30-12
By: James Galvin
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Train
- Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World - from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Tom Zoellner loves trains with a ferocious passion. In his new audiobook he chronicles the innovation and sociological impact of the railway technology that changed the world, and could very well change it again. From the frigid Trans-Siberian Railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the futuristic maglev trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of man's relationship with trains. Zoellner examines both the mechanics of the rails and their engines and how they helped societies evolve. Not only do trains transport people and goods in an efficient manner, but they also reduce pollution and dependency upon oil.
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The world history of trains up to the present
- By matthew on 03-06-14
By: Tom Zoellner
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Grandma Gatewood's Walk
- The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
- By: Ben Montgomery
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."
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Inspiring story about a strong amazing woman
- By David Shear on 12-22-14
By: Ben Montgomery
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The Rush
- America's Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Bernard Setaro Clark
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper headlines declared "Gold Fever!" as hundreds of thousands of men and women borrowed money, quit their jobs, and allowed themselves - for the first time ever - to imagine a future of ease and splendor.
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Loved it. Want to hear more of Clarks work.
- By Carlos on 01-11-16
By: Edward Dolnick
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Prairie Fires
- The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
- By: Caroline Fraser
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Millions of fans of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls - the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true story of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder's biography.
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Don’t read if you don’t want your fond memories...
- By NMwritergal on 11-24-17
By: Caroline Fraser
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That Old Ace in the Hole
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
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Doesn't work as a novel
- By Sarah C on 05-30-12
By: Annie Proulx
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Running Out
- In Search of Water on the High Plains
- By: Lucas Bessire
- Narrated by: John Chancer
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.
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Water is life, so….
- By Caroline Pufalt on 11-29-21
By: Lucas Bessire
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Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman
- Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland
- By: Miriam Horn
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Many of the men and women doing today's most consequential environmental work - restoring America's grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and oceans - would not call themselves environmentalists; they would be too uneasy with the connotations of that word. What drives them is their deep love of the land - the iconic terrain where explorers and cowboys, pioneers, and riverboat captains forged the American identity. They feel a moral responsibility to preserve this heritage and natural wealth.
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great stories
- By GMMT on 05-15-18
By: Miriam Horn
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The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
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Superior non-fiction
- By Lila on 05-20-11
By: Isabel Wilkerson
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An Hour Before Daylight
- Memories of a Rural Boyhood
- By: Jimmy Carter
- Narrated by: Jimmy Carter
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Abridged
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In an American story of enduring importance, former President Jimmy Carter re-creates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm, before the civil rights movement that changed the country.
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A rare view of rural America
- By Samantha on 07-05-03
By: Jimmy Carter
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Breaking Blue
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1935, the Spokane police regularly extorted sex, food, and money from the reluctant hobos (many of them displaced farmers who had fled the midwestern dust bowls), robbed dairies, and engaged in all manner of nefarious crimes, including murder. This history was suppressed until 1989, when former logger, Vietnam vet, and Spokane cop Tony Bamonte discovered a strange 1955 deathbed confession while researching a thesis on local law enforcement history.
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Excellent! Highly Recommended.
- By R. Smith on 02-25-17
By: Timothy Egan