KU Common Book 2013: Contextualized in Gov. Info.

Unlike government publications published since 1976, most earlier titles are NOT listed in the KU Online Catalog.  For pre-1976 paper and microfiche government publications use these online indexes and catalogs to find shelving call number (the SuDoc classification number).  

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In The Worst Hard Time Timothy Egan makes references to specific events and describes personal accounts that can be contextualized with government resources.  Many agencies gathered and published statistics,  conducted research and published reports during and about the dust bowl years.  Congress debated funding projects in various parts of the country and their rhetoric is published substantially verbatim in the Congressional Record as well as other Congressional documents and hearings.  The following are passages from Egan’s books with examples of government information resources you can use to delve deeper into a topic.

Examples:  Health, Weather, New Deal Agencies, Land Use, Wheat Production

“There was somebody new in town, a woman doc who had just shown up in Boise City.  When Folkers went to see her, she diagnosed him with stomach cancer. Cancer? That meant death, surely.  No, the doc assured Folkers.  She had developed a cure for cancer, salve and bandage, the special ointment drawing out the disease.”  -- p. 106

“By the mid-1930s, a fourth condition, dust pneumonia, was rampant. It was one of the biggest killers.  Doctors were not even sure if it was a disease unique from any of the common types of pneumonia, which is an infection in the lungs. They saw a pattern of symptoms: children, infants, or the elderly with coughing jags and body aches, particularly chest pains, and shortness of breath.  Many had nausea and could not hold food down.  Within days of diagnosis, some would die.” -- p. 173

“This year, 1935, had been one duster after the other and April showed no sign of letup, no rain in the forecast, four years into the drought. At the end of March, black blizzards had fallen for twelve straight days.  During one of those storms, the wind was clocked at forty miles an hour or better – for a hundred hours.” -- p. 194

“…one of Roosevelt’s alphabet agencies…” -- p. 159

“On the  Texas Panhandle, two million acres of sod had been turned now – a 300 percent increase over ten years ago.  Up in Baca County, two hundred thousand acres.  In Cimarron County, Oklahoma, another quarter million acre. … They removed the native prarie grass, a web of perennial species evolved over twenty thousand years or more, so completely that by the end of 1931 it was a different land – thirty-three million acres stripped bare in the southern plains.” -- p. 101

“But here on the High Plains – look at this wheat in the early summer of 1931: it was pouring out of threshers, piling high once again, gold and fat, an so much of it that it formed hillocks bigger than any tuft of land in Dallan County, Texas.” -- p. 101