Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Dust Bowl

Subtitle: The Southern Plains in the 1930s

Author: Donald Worster

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-14-17

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Science & Technology, Environment

Publisher's Summary:

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.

Critic Reviews:

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

Members Reviews:

The Archetype of Declensionist Environmental History

Dust Bowl is an undeniable classic of environmental history. Donald Worsterâs synthesis of ecology and social history set a precedent for the burgeoning field when the book was published in 1979. And as a document of âone of the worstâ ecological blunders in historyâ (p. 4), Dust Bowl reads like a necessary cautionary tale from a wise elder.

Yet, for all its thorough analysis, vivid imagery, and scholarly importance, Dust Bowl is often distractingly heavy-handed (Mind youâthis review is coming from as staunch an environmentalist as you will meet.). It is telling that the bookâs introductory quote comes from Karl Marx, with whom Worster shared a penchant for historical fatalism. Turn-of-the-century capitalism, Worster would argue, was (and in many ways still is) on a collision course with the natural limits of ecology, and this inevitable disaster manifested most clearly in the âGreat American Desertâ (p. 81) during the 1930s. But the notion of Culture, to which Worster points as the explanatory variable in our downfallâvariously, a âcapitalist ethosâ (p. 96), or a set of âbourgeois valuesâ (p. 136)âleaves no room for human agency and leaves this reader wondering: Are we looking at the issue critically or just commiserating? At best, Worsterâs line of reasoning is accurate but extremely depressing. At worst, it is nihilistic and somewhat offensive (Note how often he uses the word âclingâ in regards to traditional practices.). Indeed, Worster cautions in his preface that his argument âwill not be acceptable to many plainsmenâ (p. vii). I would take that sentiment further and suggest that it may not be acceptable to really anyone who has hope for the future.

Since the publication of Dust Bowl, environmental historians have been engaged in a delicate tap dance with the most pressing issue facing our species: environmental degradation.