Here's a thought-provoking book about a rarely examined moment in American history that tells a story of fortitude and strength, reveals the innocent naivete that is often the seed bed of disaster, and sheds light on the precariousness of our tenancy of this planet. The homesteaders who tore up the buffalo grass to plant wheat were well-meaning and industrious; they had no idea that they were creating conditions that would destroy their world. The fact that profiteers (as usual) escalated the situation is almost beside the point. The people just didn't know the harm they were doing. The result was horrendous and unremitting. To this day the area of the dust bowl is a thinly populated region never fully recovered from the cataclysm. But perhaps Egan's greatest contribution is his unwillingness to assign blame. What Egan accomplishes takes more intelligence and guts, and is more helpful, to show that often disasters are the result not of malice or venality but a series of random circumstances linked to ill-advised decisions which, in a different sequence, might have produced a different result. Sometimes, after all, we are just the victims of fate. For another great book that takes the same angle on a different disaster read the impeccable To Sleep with the Angels by David Cowan about a deadly blaze at a Catholic elementary school on Chicago's West Side in 1958. For an insightful glimpse at the dust bowl region as it exists today check out Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole.