Prelude to the Dust Bowl
Drought in the Nineteenth-Century Southern Plains
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4156794 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Neil M Maher (New Jersey Institute of Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 778-779 |
| Publication date | 2017-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jax362 |
| OpenAlex | W2770757074 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Similar to a boisterous guest who stays too long at a holiday party, drought remains a persistent, and disruptive, visitor in Kevin Z. Sweeney's Prelude to the Dust Bowl. The book not only uncovers the history of four major early droughts that have been overshadowed historically by the more famous “dirty thirties” of the early twentieth century but it also argues that these severe dry spells shaped the history of a region that includes present-day Texas, Oklahoma, northeastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, and southern Kansas. “Climate and short-term climate change,” Sweeney argues, “were pervasive factors underlying all of the others, including relations between Native people and non-Indians, military operations, economic concerns, and even slavery debates” (p. xiii). Sweeney, who grew up on a sun-parched farm in Oklahoma before becoming a historian, organizes the book not around the four droughts but rather through thirteen short chapters that painstakingly narrate the region's overall history. Readers join several early nineteenth-century expeditions that mapped the area, enter into national debates regarding Indian removal, learn the intricacies of local Native American alliances during the Civil War, and listen to boosters after the war promote fake rain-making schemes to encourage settlement. With each historic turn, Sweeney includes analysis of how the four droughts, and the atypical rainy years that came in between, influenced historical events
Ancient history · Archaeology · Economic history · Geography · Settlement (finance · Spanish Civil War · Visitor pattern · American Environmental and Regional History · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Tree-ring climate responses
| Citations per year | 0.6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |