A Sense of Place: Donald Worster's Dust Bowl

This retrospective review of Donald Worster's 1979 prize-winning history, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, explores the book's lasting contributions to the fields of environmental history, Western history, agricultural history, and the history of technology. It highlights Worster's emphasis on capitalism as a mediating force between nature and culture and between technology and the environment, as well as its role in handicapping natural resources reform efforts on the Great Plains, especially those proposed by soil conservationists, agronomists, and ecologists during the New Deal.