In 2007 and 2008, the Redmond Regional Library sponsored community-wide reading events called “One Book, One Redmond, One Summer,” with book discussions and author appearances at venues including the library, the Redmond Senior Center and Redmond High School.

This year, the “One Book, One Redmond” program will be different in several respects.

It will take place in the fall and early winter and will feature a non-fiction book, the National Book Award-winning “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan.

Egan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New York Times, lives in Seattle and has agreed to speak at the Redmond Regional Library at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3. There will also be book discussions throughout Redmond but this “One Book, One Redmond” program will not feature an author appearance at the high school.

“We are hoping that teachers will try to include some of the book in their classes and encourage students to come to the library to see the author in the evening (of Dec. 3),” said Andrew McClung, a librarian at the Redmond branch of the King County Library System. “Timothy Egan does have a new book, ‘The Big Burn,’ coming out in October. We’re hoping he gets lots of publicity for that one, in hopes that it might encourage people to come see him. Our ‘One Book’ title, however, will be ‘The Worst Hard Time.'”

In addition, McClung said, “This year, the City of Redmond will be able to film the event for RCTV, which is a change from last year. Also new this year, is a small film festival of sorts to be held at the library. We will be screening three or four popular movies that have been good depictions of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.”

The Dust Bowl, regarded as the worst weather event in American history until Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, is the subject of “The Worst Hard Time.” Egan interviewed elderly survivors of the fierce dust storms that ravaged the High Plains of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico in the 1930s. These are heartbreaking stories of perseverance and abject poverty. People were starving and literally choking to death on clouds of black dust.

The devastation of the Dust Bowl was attributed to overfarming in the 1920s.

In a press release about “The Worst Hard Time,” Egan explained, “There are so many echoes of what happened in the 1930s and the hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast in the summer of 2005. For starters, there were ample warnings that a large part of the United States could be rendered uninhabitable if people continued to live as they did — in this case, ripping up all the grass that held the earth in place. In one sense, the prairie grass was like the levees around New Orleans; the grass protected the land against ferocious winds, cycles of drought and storms. Then after the big dusters hit, you had a massive exodus: more than a quarter million people left their homes and fled. Never before or since had so many Americans been on the move because of a single weather event — until Hurricane Katrina.”

We asked McClung if librarians and Friends of the Redmond Library chose “The Worst Hard Time” as its 2009 “One Book, One Redmond” selection because of recent local weather events — the severe wind, snow and ice storms that have made climate change a genuine concern.

That is definitely one of the reasons, McClung replied.

“Also, a lot of people have been interested in Depression-era history recently. Maybe because it puts the current ‘hard times’ into perspective.”

Previous “One Book, One Redmond” selections were the novels “The Work of Wolves” by Kent Meyers and “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie.

McClung said extra copies of “The Worst Hard Time” should be available at the Redmond Regional Library closer to the author visit and that the Depression-era films will be screened at the library on Sundays in November. Watch for updates in the Redmond Reporter and at www.redmond-reporter.com.

Educators and others who would like to know more about the “One Book, One Redmond” program can contact Andrew McClung at (425) 885-1861 or andrewm@kcls.org. The Redmond Regional Library is located at 15990 NE 85th St.