Timothy Egan

A devout, engaged, educated Irish Catholic woman has given up all her ambitions to stay home and raise a brood of seven. Active in the church her whole life, she lies on her deathbed from a brain tumor, and quietly says to her son: "I'm not feeling it, Timmy... I'm not sure anymore...I don't know what to believe or what's ahead..." It reminded me of my grandmother at the funeral of my grandfather (lifelong staunch Dutch Reformed, both of them) when they closed the lid of the casket. She show more sobbed and cried: "Now I'll never see him again!" All those years of faith and belief, a promised afterlife... and when it came to the end, it faltered.

Egan, a thoughtful, brisk, and gifted writer of history and commentary, is shaken. His wife is Jewish, he is mostly lapsed, and they have raised their children as freethinkers. But that astonishing human quest (including his own) for meaning, for "spirituality," for faith or belief or whatever it is, nags at him. So with a copy of Christopher Hitchens (!) in his pack, he sets off to make the pilgrimage from Canterbury, England to Rome. And it's quite a journey.

Over 300 pages, he ponders Thomas Becket, Augustine, two Francises (Il Poverello of Assisi and the current pope, whom he hopes to meet), Crusaders, saints obscure and famous, church architecture, the Roman and papal empires, Jewish persecution, the unspeakable savagery with which Christians have treated not just Jews and infidels but each other and children, and the courageous and humane clerics who aid the helpless, who illuminate beautiful books and till gardens. He considers the age-old question of theodicy: why would an all-powerful God permit the Holocaust? the Massacre of Wassy? The serial abuse of young boys by his own parish priest with harrowing results? How could the Catholic Church be responsible for both a furious estrangement and salvation in response to tragedies - just within Egan's family?

To Egan's credit, he examines the questions: carefully, deeply, humanely, and has no easy answers. He expertly interweaves history, the lives of emperors, monks and saints, stained glass, and vaulted naves. There's a crash course in how theological bureaucracy politicized the simple gospels. He strides across the plains of northern France and contemplates the killing fields of the Great War, takes the occasional train to hilltop towns amid vineyards, the Great St Bernard Pass in the Alps, and down into the flinty sun of Italy where every meal seems to be an adventure of its own. He meets good-humored monks in pilgrim hostels, shares the road with other walkers with their own motivations, peers in amazement at an "incorruptible" lady saint, looking like Snow White in her glass casket after 300 years. Always thinking, always musing, always trying to unpack why we humans do this, why do we need this, in all its contradictions of glory and monstrous violence?

This atheist loved every page of this book. It's the kind of trek I would like to take, and the kind of book I wish I could write. Having done a mini-pilgrimage of my own to the grave of St Francis in Assisi, there were many moments when I wanted to dash off an email to Egan, and tell him something or ask him something... or spend a day or two on the road with him, with a carafe of local wine in a little restaurant in the evenings. He comes to his own conclusions: the journey seems to have settled him a little. He will keep the joys, the comforts; he will reject the evils, and let the rest go to be thought over more, or by others. I am grateful he chose to share his travels with us.

juliestielstra.com show less

On the one hand, reading about the life of Edward Curtis one is transported back in time to what feels like a lost world in America. To a time before the steamroll of modernity transformed the land and its people. On the other hand, reading the finer details of Curtis' life, including the ups and downs with the family he was mostly apart from, I'm reminded that everyday life hasn't changed all that much in the past several hundred years. Sure, the scenery has changed, and the toys and tools show more we buy, sell, and make are much improved, but our hopes, dreams, worries and growing pains are eerily similar from one generation to the next.

Edward Curtis dreamed big, and was awarded a life of adventure and a legacy beyond his years, but he paid for it with an understandably troubled marriage and a lifetime of financial destitution. show less

I’ve read several disaster books, about both natural and man-made disasters. And I’ve read at least one other Dust Bowl book, but Egan’s book is really in a class all its own. Most of these books are well researched; Egan’s is meticulously researched, but his research has a human touch feeling unlike most of the other disaster books I’ve read. Egan introduces us to a group of Dusters who lived through this era, and when I use the words “lived through,” I don’t say it lightly. show more Surviving the Dust Bowl was nothing short of heroic. Not everyone made it, though. Some were broken by the destroyed economy; some choked to death on the flying dirt. A few barely made it out of diapers before they succumbed to the dust. I can’t stress enough how well written this book is. The National Book Award citation is proof of that. With the hectic pace of nonfiction books produced these days, it is so rewarding to read one that is crafted at beautifully as The Worst Hard Time is. show less

i see why this is so popular. it approaches the enormous and complex Dust Bowl disaster from a human-eye perspective; fleshes out the explanation of flawed government policies with individual stories (or is that the other way around?); doesn't spend a long time explaining the Whys Wherefores and Huh?s of ecological change or the different properties of grass varieties; and Egan adores FDR without getting quite too mushy (it is difficult, I understand; I fangirl over FDR too). He calmly notes show more the loss of indigenous people and the US's deliberate destruction of their way of life, without wringing his hands in any way that could be read as liberal.

oh, and it's beautifully written. like goddamn.

aaaand those were my problems. i wanted more science. i wanted more explanation. his stories so damn gripping (OMG THE DYING BABIES. OMG THAT SCENE IN THE US SENATE), and his writing so careful of the line between "poetic" and "accessible", i almost forgot to want more.

(also it ended abruptly. bleh.) show less