Timothy Egan

Timothy Egan (born November 8, 1954 in Seattle, Washington) is an American author and journalist. For The Worst Hard Time, a 2006 book about people who lived through The Great Depression's Dust Bow, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Washington State Book Award in history/biography.

In 2001, The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series to which Egan contributed, "How Race is Lived in America". He currently lives in Seattle and contributes opinion columns as the paper's Pacific Northwest correspondent.

Quotes

How Stupid Is Iowa? (2016)

'How Stupid Is Iowa?', The New York Times (26 January 2016)

• The good people of Iowa have debated issues ranging from nuclear Armageddon to universal health care. And then there’s 2016, when the top two Republican candidates in the dwindling hours before caucusgoers pick a nominee are throwing around this question: “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” It was Donald Trump who first raised the issue of Hawkeye State imbecility, in a mocking reference to a crush that Iowans had on Ben Carson last fall. And it’s the odious Ted Cruz who has been using Trump’s very words to goad Iowans into proving that they are not, in fact, so stupid as to back an ego-inflamed reality television star who makes fun of them.

• The problem is not that the people of Iowa are stupid. They are not, by most measurements. It’s that Iowa looks nothing like the rest of America. As a result, the winners, more often than not, are nationally unelectable extremists.

• You’re supposed to be vetting, Iowa. You’re supposed to be culling out the crazies. You’re supposed to recognize the fraud of Ted Cruz and how Donald Trump is playing you. For all your touted small-town verities, you’re not doing your job. Your bull manure detector is broken.

• At least we’ll hear less about corn subsidies and Corinthians II, or is it Two Corinthians? Discuss. No, don’t! Stupid, stupid people. Again, that’s Trump talking, not me. He uses that word to describe nearly everyone not named Donald J. Trump. He’s presented no governing philosophy, no policy details, nothing resembling even-keeled judgment. He’s running a combustible celebrity feud fest, and you love it.

• The Iowa caucuses are no more predictive than a gasbag on an ethanol high swaying from a bridge in Madison County.

• A majority of Republican caucusgoers are white, native-born and believe that electing a demagogue will make American white again.

External links

• Timothy Egan (1990). The Good Rain. ISBN 0-394-57724-8. 
• Timothy Egan (1992). Breaking Blue. ISBN 0-394-58819-3. 
• Timothy Egan (1998). Lasso the Wind. ISBN 0-375-40024-9. 
• Timothy Egan (2004). The Winemaker's Daughter. ISBN 1-4000-4099-X. 
• Egan, Timothy (2006). The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-77347-3. 
• Timothy Egan (October 2009). The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. ISBN 0-618-96841-5. 
• Timothy Egan (October 2012). Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. ISBN 0-618-96902-0. 
• Timothy Egan (2016), The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero. ISBN 9780544272880

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