Timothy Egan Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Timothy Egan is an award winning, acclaimed author and veteran chronicler of American history and the American landscape. The Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and reporter has also won the National Book Award.

For several years now, he has been writing the “Opinionator,” a popular column for “The New York Times.” His column has consistently been one of the most popular pieces on the publication’s website.

In addition to working for the newspapers, he has also authored several bestselling books including the National Book Award winning title “The Worst Hard Time.” “The Big Burn,” which he published in 2009 inspired a documentary by the same name and would become a New York Times bestselling title.

“A Pilgrimage to Eternity,” which he published in 2019 would also become one of his most popular novels that was an “Oprah Must Read” in that year. Egan currently makes his home in Seattle, even though he was born and grew up in the Pacific Northwest.

As a New York Times columnist, he won the Pulitzer Prize as he was part of the team that wrote the “How Race is Lived in America” series. Over the years, Timothy Egan’s works have been the inspiration for popular documentaries and have also been used by teachers in classrooms.

Egan often features prominently in many of the documentary adaptations of his novels such as “The Big Burn” and “The Dust Bowl” both of which became top rated films. Egan is also a notable biographer and “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher” found a wide audience.

Publishers Weekly named it in its list of Best Books of the year in 2013 and it also received the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in the same year. The New York Times called “The Immortal Irishman,” a masterpiece of storytelling regarding the Irish American experience.

“The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan is set in the 1930s, when the dust storms terrorized the High Plains, during the height of The Depression.
While the “Dust Bowl” is not in the public consciousness in the modern world, there are many lessons we can learn from it that could be used to deal with 21st century challenges. It could help us determine what caused the disaster, and what we can do to prevent it from happening again.

Timothy Egan’s novel explores one of the most iconic chapters of American history. It follows the lives of a dozen families in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico, as they desperately try to live through blinding dark blizzards full of dust, the death of loved ones and crop failure.

He captures the human experience by showing human character. Character develops into long suffering and stoic women and men who are determined to soldier on despite the odds stacked against them.

Timothy Egan’s “The Big Burn” is set in 1910, where strong gusts of wind are battering the drought stricken forests of Montana, Idaho and Washington. They cause hundreds of small fires that result in a blazing inferno that moves across the treetops to cross ridges, destroying timber and small towns.

Forest rangers have sought the help of day workers, college boys and immigrant workers from the mining camps to hel0p contain the fire. It is an inferno unlike anything that had ever been seen before. With more than 10,000 men, the rangers still cannot control the raging fire.

Another thread in the work is that of Teddy Roosevelt the outsized president and Gifford Pinchot his chief forester. Together they pioneered the notion of conservation.

They brought into the public consciousness the notion of land as a national treasure that needed to be preserved and owned in trust by the government, for the benefit of every American.

The rangers show true heroism, which inspired future generations of Americans to fight for the protection of national lands that persists to this day.

Timothy Egan’s “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher” is a story of how the obsession of one man resulted in the greatest cultural treasures in American history.

Edward Curtis is a handsome, charismatic man, a famous photographer and passionate mountaineer that has been compared to Annie Leibovitz. He moved in elite circles as he was a friend to the leading thinkers, vaudeville stars and presidents.

The thirty two year old decided to capture the old ways and the continent’s original inhabitants before it all disappeared. Curtis would become some kind of modern Indiana Jones, armed with a camera as he spent the better part of the next thirty years.

He traveled from the rugged rain forests of the Northwest, to the high mesa in New Mexico and to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, documenting the rituals and stories of more than eighty tribes. It took a lot of perseverance including almost a decade before he was allowed into the” Snake Dance” ceremony by the Hopi.

The quest profoundly changed his life and made him transform from a detached observer to an outraged advocate. Ultimately, he would take more than 40,000 images, record more than 10,000 audio recordings and make the first narrative documentary film ever.

One Response to “Timothy Egan”

1. Janet Bolding: 11 months ago

   I am enjoying your books. Looking forward to reading all of them.

   Reply