Overview
In this riveting chronicle, which accompanies a documentary to be broadcast on PBS in the fall, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns capture the profound drama of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terrifying photographs of mile-high dust storms, along with firsthand accounts by more than two dozen eyewitnesses, bring to life this heart-wrenching catastrophe, when a combination of drought, wind, and poor farming practices turned millions of acres of the Great Plains into a wasteland, killing crops and livestock, threatening the lives of small children, burying homesteaders' hopes under huge dunes of dirt. Burns and Duncan collected more than 300 mesmerizing photographs, some never before published, scoured private letters, government reports, and newspaper articles, and conducted in-depth interviews to produce a document that may likely be the last recorded testimony of the generation who lived through this defining decade.
Synopsis
For almost a decade, a devastating combination of drought, wind, and poor farming practices turned millions of acres of the Great Plains into a wasteland. Ceaseless "black blizzards, " turned night into day, killed crops and livestock, threatened the lives of small children, and buried homesteaders' hopes under huge dunes of dirt. The authors tell the story through private letters, newspaper accounts, and vivid interviews conducted with dozens of survivors -- the last living witnesses of the Dust Bowl, who provide scaring details of their families' ordeals. More than 300 archival photos, some from acclaimed photographers and some -- never before published -- from amateur locals, help bring this critical period to life, when the forces of greed, misinformation, and wishful thinking conspired to nearly sweep away the breadbasket of the nation. Here are stories of incredible hardship: More than 850 million tons of topsoil blew away in a single year; 14 million grasshoppers per square mile descended on parched fields; and one-quarter of the region's inhabitants packed up and left. But the Dust Bowl is also about the courage and resilience of those who remained to save their farms and their families. A larger narrative emerges: A morality tale about our relationship to the land, a study of the role and limits of government, and an affirmation of the human capacity for heroic perseverance through the crucible of drought, Depression, and dust.Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
"The most extreme natural event in 350 years" is how one historian described the Dust Bowl that engulfed the U.S. Great Plains during the mid-1930s. Millions of farm acres were destroyed and tens of millions badly damaged; hundreds of thousands of men and women in the region were forced to abandon their homes, causing migrations that are still remembered today. With its 300 photographs and scores of personal and public documents, this illustrated history curated by historian Dayton Duncan and PBS documentarian Ken Burns presents the Dust Bowl both as a calamitous natural events and a heart-wrenching human catastrophe. Editor's recommendation. (P.S. The Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History is the official companion book to the PBS series that begins in mid-November.)
From the Publisher
"This riveting, illustrated volume of vivid written and oral history extends the scope of the film...and clarifies our understanding of the 'worst manmade ecological disaster in American history.'...Burns and Duncan chronicle every harrowing phase of this 'decade of human pain and environmental degradation.' The result is a resounding chronicle of why we must preserve Earth's life-sustaining ecosystems" -Booklist
"Stormy and dark, this reads like a family scrapbook you might banish to the far corners of the attic. Who wants to remember such hard times, captured here on hardened faces and in fear-filled eyes? Why dwell on such a troublesome blip in the triumphant narrative of American manifest destiny? Fortunately, Duncan and Burns don't hesitate. Their masterful volume accompanies a November PBS documentary about the environmental catastrophe brought on by fierce drought and heedless over-cultivation in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico in the 1930s. The authors have relied on interviews with some two dozen survivors, who tell of children going to school wearing gas masks and goggles to block out the dust. Once-grassy plains became lunar landscapes, bleached and featureless. The numbers alone are stunning. In 1934, the U.S. government spent half of what it had spent throughout all of World War I just to combat the drought. Toward the end of the decade, nine million acres of land had been abandoned-an area equal to Maryland. After this year's long, dry summer, as we face the prospect of rising temperatures, this is a story full of foreboding"
-Smithsonian magazine