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In the mid-1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms. Twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic, and ecological issues-including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the ongoing problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison, and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.… (more)
This book provides a comprehensive and insightful look at the Dust Bowl and reveals many things. Particularly useful are the two sections that analyze specific counties. This is an essential read for anyone trying to understand today's environmental crises. ( )
"All progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the laborer, but of robbing the soil." Karl Marx, Capital
Dedication
For my parents, Delbert and Bonnie Worster, who went through it
First words
This book was undertaken for a selfish and private reason. I wanted to see the plains again. After a decade and a half of living in other places, many of them exotic and distant, and of studying the ideas of a larger world, I thought it was time to come home for a while and take another look at the hand and people who gave me so much to start with -Preface (1979)
The southern plains are a vast austerity. They sprawl more than 100 million acres, including parts of five states - Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Nothing that lives finds life easy under their severe skies: the weather has a nasty habit of turning harsh and violent just when them are getting comfortable. -Introduction
The Thirties began in economic depression and in drought. The first of those disasters usually gets all the attention, although for many Americans living on farms drought was the more serious problem. -Prt I, A Darkling Plain
Quotations
Last words
It would be fitting if we should find this new agriculture emerging someday soon in the old Dust Bowl.
In the mid-1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms. Twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic, and ecological issues-including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the ongoing problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison, and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.
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