Table of Contents

Introduction
Part One A Darkling Plain
1.: The Black Blizzards Roll In
2.: If It Rains
3.: Okies and Exodusters
Part Two Prelude to Dust
4.: What Holds the Earth Together
5.: Sodbusting
Part Three Cimarron County, Oklahoma
6.: Frontier in Ruins
7.: When the Cattle Ate Tumbleweeds
8.: Hard Times in the Panhandle
Part Four Haskell County, Kansas
9.: Unsettled Ground
10.: The Wheat Farmer and the Welfare State
11.: A Sense of Place
Part Five A New Deal for the Land
12.: Facing up to Limits
13.: Learning from Nature
14.: Make Two Blades of Grass Grow
Epilogue: On a Thin Edge
Afterword

About the Author

Donald Worster is Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas and the author of A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell.

Reviews

"An exciting, provocative, and stimulating study.... It has much to say to historians, environmentalists, and public policy makers."--American Historical Review
"A gracefully written and fascinating book."--History
"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