Texas. 1921: A time of abundance. Elsa Wolcott meets Rafe Martinelli and changes the direction of her life. Her only choice: marriage to a man she barely knows. 1934: Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. Elsa Martinelli, like so many of her neighbors, must make an agonizing...

Cynthia Barnett's "Rain" begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science--the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains--with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes...

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan's National Book Award - winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows. The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding...

This "riveting" companion to the PBS documentary "clarifies our understanding of the 'worst manmade ecological disaster in American history'" (Booklist).
In this riveting chronicle, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns capture the profound drama of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terrifying photographs of mile-high dust storms, along with firsthand accounts by more than two dozen eyewitnesses, bring to life this heart-wrenching catastrophe,...

The American Southwest has been decimated by drought. Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches, deciding if it should just take the whole river all for itself. Into the fray steps Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel "cuts" water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert and that...

On April 14, 1935 in Boise City, Oklahoma, the sky turned black as a massive, swirling cloud of dust engulfed the city. "It got so dark that you couldn't see your hand before your face," remembered one farmer. Blinded drivers drove their cars off the side of the road. Terrified cows spun in circles. People covered their faces, gasping for breath. This was one of many dark days during the Dust Bowl. Sick Soil: The Dust Bowltraces the tragic story of...

A lengthy California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, turning Alyssa's quiet suburban street into a warzone, and she is forced to make impossible choices if she and her brother are to survive. The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take...