Donald Worster’s Dustbowl: the Southern Plains in the 1930s is an academic book in the most positive sense: well researched, clearly written and, although at times the statistics can seem overbearing, the book is never boring. As a native of the plains, Worster has a personal connection to the material and as he tells us in the preface the book was written to examine the reasons behind the ‘dirty 30s’, and the dustbowl that plagued the American west.

While one can expect any historical study to focus on social and economic effects, something Worster does undeniably well, for instance by highlighting the various responses of farmers to the bourgeoning capitalist movement, he also takes an ecological approach. In this respect while I am sure Worster is not the sole writer to focus on the ecology he asserts, perhaps in a somewhat self-aggrandising manner that, ‘this book did succeed in laying out a fresh hypothesis that the causes lay in economic invasion and destruction of grasslands’ (p. 246) and he succeeds in delineating a clear link between American capitalism, the exploitation of the land, and the resultant dustbowl. Although Worster may try to distance himself from being overly associated with Marxist theory his relentless criticism of big business and its effects on the ecology, although undoubtedly containing a large degree of truth, often means the tone borders on a hectoring didacticism.

However, such criticisms should not detract from the books value to teachers and lecturers. While the dustbowl has always carried the potential to be just another boring historical subject, through the employment of an easy to read, well structured, narrative that focuses largely on the human cost of this tragedy Worster manages to bring the subject alive for students too.

In this respect the book features many reproductions of photographs, showing, for example, the Red Cross volunteers wearing their dust masks and Western Kansas on Black Sunday, that really manage to convey the impact of this man made environmental disaster.

Finally the book provides an accessible introduction to one of the great American disasters of the twentieth century and is a worthy addition to the library of anyone who has an interest in this area of American history.