Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | J 978.032 SAN | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
The Dust Bowl was a time of hardship and environmental and economic disaster. More than 100 million acres of land had turned to dust, causing hundreds of thousands of people to seek new homes and opportunities thousands of miles away, while millions more chose to stay and battle nature to save their land.
FDR's army of photographers took to the roads to document this national crisis. Their pictures spoke a thousand words, and a new form of storytelling- photojournalism-was born. With the help of iconic photographs from Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, and many more, Martin Sandler tells the story of a nation as it endured its darkest days and the extraordinary courage and spirit of those who survived.
Author Notes
Martin W. Sandler is the author of Lincoln Through the Lens and The Dust Bowl Through the Lens. He has won five Emmy Awards for his writing for television and is the author of more than sixty books, two of which have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Among Sandler's other books are the six volumes in his award-winning Library of Congress American History Series for Young People, a series which has sold more than 500,000 copies. Other books by Mr. Sandler include: Island of Hope: The Story of Ellis Island, Trapped in Ice, The Story of American Photography, The Vaqueros, America: A Celebration, and This Was America.
Martin Sandler has taught American history and American studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at Smith College. In 2014 his title, Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans during World War II, made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Horn Book Review
Library ed.isbn 978-0-8027-9548-9 $20.89 Forty-five double-page spreads detail the political, human, and environmental conditions and consequences of the Dust Bowl devastation in the 1930s. Topics include information on land use, the storms themselves, and the great migration to California by farm families looking for a better life. Individuals such as Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are also profiled. The majority of these subjects directly relate to Sandler's thesis: that the Dust Bowl provided a canvas for photographers to record individuals "caught in a desperate situation" and create an American portrait to inspire change. Archival photographs taken by those employed by the WPA or FSA illustrate each section with breathtaking impact in terms of both composition and subject; many of the photos are tinted, which, along with the book's aggressive design, will appeal to some and irritate others. Sandler indirectly presents an outline of photographic history, showing an early daguerreotype; the work of the Dust Bowl documentarians (whom Ansel Adams dismissed as "a bunch of sociologists with cameras"); and photo-essays from Life and Look magazines. Loosely organized, the sections stand alone, but the detailed index allows readers to find particular information quickly. Backmatter also includes sources for quotations; photo credits; a bibliography; and books, websites, and DVDs recommended for further inquiry. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Sandler, whose previous books include America through the Lens (2005) and Lincoln through the Lens (2008), has found, in America's Dust Bowl, a natural subject for the series' photo-essay format. Well researched and dramatically illustrated, the book explains how settlement, farming methods, and weather together devastated the southern plains and, by extension, the people who lived there, how they reacted, how the government responded, how the Dust Bowl finally ended, and who created the photographic record of the period. Each double-page spread uses a heading and a period quote to open a new topic, discusses it in a few paragraphs of text, and illustrates it with a large photo and a small one. Detailed captions comment on the photos. Telling the story with intelligence and sensitivity, Sandler honors the people who lived through the disaster and the great photographers of the 1930s, who documented the dramatic story for the people of their own time and created a record that transcends that time.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A Dust Bowl farm in the Texas Panhandle, photographed by Dorothea Lange, from "Years of Dust." A MAN in rumpled clothes walks down a dirt highway. Ahead of him the ground and sky blur together in a bright haze. He has a bedroll slung on one shoulder and stoops a little from the weight. His boots are covered in dust. Turn the page: the man disappears. There's a second photograph, twice as wide, with a road that is achingly empty. Overhead, a black cloud blots out the sky. So begins "Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl," Albert Marrin's engrossing account of what was arguably the worst ecological disaster in American history. When a severe drought struck the Midwest in 1931, farmers had been churning up the Great Plains for more than half a century. Without native grasses to anchor the topsoil, fields crumbled to dust. Millions of acres of arable land were swept away in black blizzards. Hungry families headed west, pinning their hopes on California. Dust blew so far east, it settled on the White House lawn. In the best possible way, "Years of Dust" feels like a museum in the form of a book. Marrin knits together natural science and sociology, news stories, snippets from novels and poems, eyewitness descriptions, journal entries, and the words of hardtime bards like John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie. His selection of photographs - paired with maps, posters, engravings and other artifacts - brings the blown-out landscapes to life. (Imagine how thin our understanding of the Dust Bowl would be without iconic images from documentary photographers like Dorothea Lange. Even in the 1930s, these were events you had to see to believe - without pictures, the truth sounded like hyperbole.) Marrin's writing is particularly evocative when he turns an anthropological eye to the 2.5 million migrants - the so-called "Okies" and "tin-can tourists" - who were driven from their homes and became "refugees in their own land." Of the exodus, he writes: "Rattling and wheezing, coated with dust, the aging vehicles swayed under loads they were not designed to bear. Inside and outside, tied to the trunk, roof and running boards, were all the family's worldly possessions. There were bedsprings and bedding; tools; groceries; pots, pans, dishes and silverware; baskets, bottles, basins and buckets; washtubs and washboards. Now and then, a goat or chickens rode in a cage tied to a running board. Passengers scarcely had space for themselves." Kids will recognize most of these worldly possessions. They offer a bridge to the past, making the refugees' extraordinary circumstances tangible. This technique is nothing new; Tim O'Brien recited lists of objects to illustrate personality and motivation in "The Things They Carried." But Marrin uses it well here, revealing how migrant families wanted nothing more than to recreate a sense of home. "Years of Dust" also puts young readers in the shoes of Dust Bowl survivors with heartbreaking photos that focus on children: three boys in overalls crammed into the backseat of a car in Muskogee County, Okla.; a little girl holding her mother's hand as they step over a drainage ditch in a California squatter camp. In a few places, Marrin's efforts to enliven his already lively material tip over into melodrama. (Toward the end of a long section on swarming locusts: "Young children, caught outdoors, screamed in terror as the insects' claws caught in their hair and bodies wriggled into their clothing." Aieee! It's a B-movie.) And there's a hole at the end. The book's final chapter, "Future Dust Bowls," warns readers about man-made environmental disasters on the horizon, including desertification in China and the Amazon. This section is invaluable; it links the Dust Bowl to present-day problems. So it seems strange that there's no mention of global warming. Gripes aside, though, "Years of Dust" is a lucid and powerful book. "The Dust Bowl Through the Lens" visits similar territory, including many of the same photographs, as "Years of Dust." Unfortunately, it's not as cohesive. The book is organized in a series of double-paged spreads, each a mini-chapter on a new theme, presented in a rigid format: text on the left, photograph on the right. This layout makes the narrative feel choppy and, at times, unbalanced. Some topics, like "Coping With Hardship," deserve more than a page, while others warrant less. After a brief introduction, Martin W. Sandler, the author, jumps into his first mini-chapter, discussing "Migrant Mother," Dorothea Lange's celebrated portrait of a destitute woman huddled with three young children. But the full emotional impact of this photo isn't available so early in the book; Sandler has barely begun to explain the historical context that makes the image so moving. The main message of the book - that "pictures shocked the government and then inspired it to take needed action" - is a bit overwrought. Sometimes the story feels torn between two intersecting historical arcs, the crisis of the Dust Bowl and the rise of documentary photography. But in a few memorable spreads, like "Portraying a Nation in Hard Times" and "Reformer With a Camera" - the balance works beautifully. "THE STORM IN THE BARN," a graphic novel by Matt Phelan, offers a very different look at Dust Bowl hardships. In pencil, ink and watercolor Phelan depicts Kansas as a vast, hazy landscape of muted colors. The palette brightens only when 11-year-old Jack imagines another place: his mother describes life before the drought, or a kindly storekeeper spins a yarn whose hero (also named Jack) conquers a twoheaded giant. If the family farm were up and running, Jack would have plenty to do. But the crops are gone. His sister has dust pneumonia. Bullies pick on him at school. Surrounded by forces that - literally and figuratively - are much bigger than he is, Jack feels powerless. These are promising ingrethents for a plot, but Phelan undermines them with sinister scenes that create a sense of quiet dread but don't go anywhere. Jack wonders about snakes nailed to fence posts, a superstitious effort to bring rain. He watches men bludgeon ravenous jackrabbits to death with spades, pipes and baseball bats. The ending is a tangle of violence. Jack finds himself face to face with the Storm King, an evil spirit who withheld the rain to win power. "Do you believe in the power of the Rain?" the spirit hisses. "Do you fear the Storm, boy?" (At this point, Jack lies on the floor of the barn as the Storm King forces rain down his throat, an act that, as it's depicted here, bears an unfortunate resemblance to waterboarding.) Jack finally wins a climactic battle on top of a windmill, and it starts to rain. He's saved everyone. Unless you go with a possibility suggested earlier in the book: Jack has "dust dementia" and has imagined the whole thing. Either way, the fight doesn't feel all that redemptive. Dropping a supernatural enemy into an environment that's already so alien and strange is overkill, like setting a vampire movie on the moon. Once you've got the moon, why would you want to tack on vampires? For a rich, fully formed work of fiction about this period, "Out of the Dust" - Karen Hesse's 1998 Newbery Medal-winning verse novel - is probably still your best bet. Jessica Bruder teaches journalism at Columbia University and is the author of "Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-8-This excellent photo-essay traces the history of the Dust Bowl from its causes to its resolution. In tandem, Sandler treats the role of the budding field of photojournalism. Forty-four spreads feature a page of clear, direct text with a large, well-reproduced image, many of which are set on color pages. Many of these, such as Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" and Arthur Rothstein's "Fleeing a Dust Storm," have become iconic. The author repeatedly makes the point that it was in large part the force of these pictures that motivated the Roosevelt administration to take action in aid of both Dust Bowl farmers and migrant workers. Seldom has the connection between the arts and the general quality of life been made so clear. The text deals equally with those who fled the decimated Bread Basket for California and those who waited out the devastation and dust. Throughout, the use of primary sources is superb, with quotations from affected citizens, the photojournalists themselves, political and entertainment figures, and writers, giving a multifaceted picture of a seminal time in United States history. This book gives a more general picture of the time than Jerry Stanley's Children of the Dust Bowl (Crown, 1993) and is focused more specifically than Russell Freedman's Children of the Great Depression (Clarion, 2005). It provides a lesson in strength and perseverance that is certainly applicable today.-Ann Welton, Helen B. Stafford Elementary, Tacoma, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A unique approach to chronicling the Dust Bowl disaster focuses on the role photographers played in bringing the hardships of victims to national attention. The author notes that in the 1930s photographers were still discovering new possibilities for the relatively new medium. Rather than simply document the desperate circumstances, such photographers as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein used their work to raise the national social conscience and shock the government into action. Each page of text explains some aspect of the Dust Bowl, Great Depression or details on the art of photography and is paired with a photograph. Prefacing the text are quotes from Dust Bowl victims and such notables as Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck. The one-page-per-topic approach can be frustrating, as some are worthy of more detail than what's given. More background information about the photographers would also have been welcome. Overall, though, Sandler offers an interesting perspective on the power photography has to shape public opinion and inspire social change. (sources, further reading/surfing, index [not seen]) (Nonfiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.