Books: The Worst Hard Time

 

This week I received an e-mail announcing the KU Common Book for the next academic year. Even though I'm rarely on campus, I still like to use the Common Book as a motivator to get me to read something new and different, or something that I otherwise would not have known about. Last year the book was The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. This book was a gut wrenching retelling of the horrors of the Dust Bowl years, and really drove home the importance of environmental stewardship. Yesterday, on a 70 degree January day (record-breaking), I couldn't help but think about the extreme environmental damage that we are doing to our planet, and to think of the terror that people experienced during the Dust Bowl. Reading the book also made me so very grateful for all that I have in my life today- any small hardships that I have experienced can't compare in any way to what people went through on the High Plains in the 1930s. The experiences chronicled in The Worst Hard Time are so recent, and so memorable, yet we as a nation continue to stand by and do nothing in the face of climate change. The book detailed how the changes of the Dust Bowl happened so quickly, and we fully know how quickly climate change is happening today, so why are we so passive, especially when small changes in habits, such as using bar soap, not using K-Cup coffees, eating less meat, or composting food trash can make a significant change in one's carbon footprint? We can only hope that more people will become aware of the small changes they can make and that we as a nation can start to reverse some of our environmental damage in the coming years before something monumental occurs again.