Americans View Their Dust Bowl Experience

Book excerpt: A collection of first-person accounts of the trauma of the 1930s in the Heartland, assessed by historians from the distance of several decades. Section I offers accounts from memoirs and from newspapers and magazines of the 1930s, describing the Farmer's March on Washington, formation of the Farmer's Union, the failure of rainmaking machines, and the nation's reactions to increasing hardship. Section II presents retrospective analysis from the 1960s through the 1990s, offering an understanding of the natural, economic, and political facets of the disaster. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR