Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s - Softcover

"Worster has contributed a major work to the historiography of the United States in the twentieth century."―Journal of American History

"A stunning entry in the newly emerging field of environmental history...in the vanguard of the rapid redefinition of Western history that is presently occurring."―Arizona and the West

"An important book with a scope broader than its title suggests. It should be read widely."―Western Historical Quarterly

"An exciting, provocative, and stimulating study.... It has much to say to historians, environmentalists, and public policy makers."―American Historical Review

"Superb social history.... A gracefully written and fascinating book."―History: Reviews of New Books

"Well-written...students respond to it well."―Gilbert W. Gillespie, Cornell University

"This is an excellent book, revealing the fundamental tension that has long existed between economic expansion and the health of the environment. Worster brilliantly draws lessons from his period and region of study and shows their application to other parts of the world today."―Scott Hamilton Dewey, California State University, Los Angeles

"Over ten years old, in a field that is rapidly growing and changing and still the best environmental history of 20th century agriculture!"―Mart Stuart, Oregon State University

"Worster's book is the first to pinpoint the results of the mechanization and defiance of nature, and the sources of such practices. Definitely the best introduction to understanding the cultural sources of modern environmental crises."―A.R. Vasavi, Tufts University

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.

Now, 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 on-going 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.