The image of thirties “Exodusters” fleeing dirt storms and drought is imprinted on the American consciousness. But in The Worst Hard Time (Houghton Mifflin), Pulitzer Prize–winner Timothy Egan considers instead the nearly one million Dust Bowlers who stayed put—whether from stubbornness or circumstance—to scratch out a meager existence. Egan follows a handful of families in the Texas High Plains, the Oklahoma Panhandle, and elsewhere through the devastation visited on them by the Great Depression and the raging winds that literally peeled the soil off their lands. The Worst Hard Time is a compelling human drama and a reminder that a thoughtless ecological practice (in this case, stripping bare the great grasslands) is an open invitation for Mother Nature to kick butt on a grand scale. Reviewed by Mike Shea
Devotees of Wonkette—the snarky political blog of Texas-bred Ana Marie Cox—will cotton to the elbows-propped-on-the-bar style of her first novel, Dog Days (Riverhead). And they’ll find a soul mate in young campaign flack Melanie Thorton, who can’t spin fast enough to keep Democratic presidential candidate John Hillman from catching a faceful of right-wing mud. To distract the media, Thorton invents blogging Beltway slut Capitolette, whose eponymous Web site chronicles her kisses-for-cash liaisons with top Republican staffers—not unlike real-life counterpart Washingtonienne, whose online tattling in 2004 cost her a Capitol Hill job but won her fifteen minutes of infamy. Cox’s salty tongue and world-weary manner (“…congressmen? They’re like interns. Why bother learning their names?”) make Dog Days a bracing midterm pick-me-up for the liberal, cynical crowd. Reviewed by Mike Shea
Don Haskins, the coach of Texas Western’s 1966 NCAA champion basketball team, professes to be a highly reluctant subject of Glory Road (Hyperion), his autobiography as told to Dan Wetzel. Which makes it doubly amazing that this average Joe wearing a clip-on tie (when he absolutely has to) emerges as one of the most engaging and colorful sports characters this side of Muhammad Ali. The 1966 roundball title was a civil rights milestone of sorts, because Haskins’ school (now the University of Texas at El Paso) was the first ever to start five black players in a national college tournament. But it’s the man himself—a self-confessed lunatic of a disciplinarian who is universally beloved by his ex-players—who makes Glory Road a fascinating, and subtly hilarious, study in contrasts. Reviewed by Mike Shea
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