Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 - Science & Technology — Health Sciences

Focusing on two counties on the plains of southeast Colorado--Prowers County and Baca County--Sheflin (history, Colorado State Univ.) skillfully blends strands of environmental, labor, and political history to create a detailed examination of mid-20th-century agricultural history. The author begins with the relatively familiar story of how already depressed rural communities of the 1920s faced an even deeper crisis in the next decade, which was marked by ecological and economic havoc. Carrying the discussion into the early 1960s, Sheflin pays close attention to the interplay of diverse groups at the local level--farmers, laborers, state and federal officials--as they coped with forces that seemed beyond their control during the Great Depression and WW II. Though Sheflin gives abundant attention to the enormity of the problems faced in the Dust Bowl, his primary attention is on the region's determination to adapt to the changing environmental and economic conditions that emerged from 1930s. These counties were able to respond to difficult challenges--among them labor shortages, changing economic demand in the 1940s, and the eventual return of drought in the 1950s. The discussion of the environment and migrant labor in the decades after the Dust Bowl distinguishes this volume from others on the subject and broadens its importance beyond the regional.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.