Synopses & Reviews
Looking over the vast open plains of eastern Colorado, western Kansas, and southwestern Nebraska, where one can travel miles without seeing a town or even a house, it is hard to imagine the crowded landscape of the last decades of the nineteenth century. In those days farmers, speculators, and town builders flooded the region, believing that rain would follow the plow and that the and#8220;Rainbeltand#8221; would become their agricultural Eden. It took a mere decade for drought and economic turmoil to drive these dreaming thousands from the land, turning farmland back to rangeland and reducing settlements to ghost towns.
David J. Wishartand#8217;s The Last Days of the Rainbelt is the sobering tale of the rapid rise and decline of the settlement of the western Great Plains. History finds its voice in interviews with elderly residents of the region by Civil Works Administration employees in 1933 and 1934. Evidence similarly emerges from land records, climate reports, census records, and diaries, as Wishart deftly tracks the expansion of westward settlement across the central plains and into the Rainbelt. Through an examination of migration patterns, land laws,and#160;town-building, and agricultural practices, Wishart re-creates the often-difficult life of settlers in a semiarid region who undertook the daunting task of adapting to a new environment. His book brings this era of American settlement and failure on the western Great Plains fully into the scope of historical memory.
Review
and#8220;David Wishart has discovered a rich lode of pioneer settler interviews from eastern Colorado, which form the heart of the book. . . . [He] skillfully retells the story of environmental misunderstanding through the eyes of the settlers who lived it.and#8221;and#8212;John C. Hudson, professor of geography at Northwestern University and author of Across this Land: A Regional Geography of the United Statesand#160; and Canadaand#160;
Review
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The Last Days of the Rainbelt offers countless insights into frontier settlement.andquot;andmdash;
Environmental HistoryReview
"By combining previously overlooked archival material with an informed understanding of the region, Wishart makes an important time and place come alive."and#8212;James R. Shortridge, Kansas History
Review
andquot;Wishart has constructed an account that, page for page, may provide as good a portrait of the region as those produced by authors such as Walter Webb, Donald Worster, or Mari Sandoz. Thanks to scholars such as David Wishart, this volume also shows that the New Deal is the gift that keeps on giving.andquot;andmdash;Richard D. Loosbrock, Nebraska History
Synopsis
In 1877, a decade after the Civil War, not only was the United States gripped by a deep depression, but the country was also in the throes of nearly unimaginable violence and upheaval marking the end of the brief period known as Reconstruction and a return to white rule across the South. In the wake of the contested presidential election of 1876, white supremacist mobs swept across the South, killing and driving out the last of the Reconstruction state governments. A strike involving millions of railroad workers turned violent as it spread from coast-to-coast, and for a moment seemed close to toppling the nations economic structure.
In 1877, celebrated historian Michael Bellesiles reveals that the fires of that fated year also fueled a hothouse of cultural and intellectual innovation. Bellesiles relates the story of 1877 not just through dramatic events, but also through the lives of famous and little-known Americans.
Synopsis
A decade after the Civil War, the United States was not only gripped by a deep depression, but was also in the throes of nearly unimaginable upheaval. In "1877," historian Bellesiles reveals that the fires of that fated year also fueled cultural and intellectual innovation.
About the Author
David J. Wishart is a professor of geography at the University of Nebraskaandndash;Lincoln. He is the editor of the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains and Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians and the author of An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians, all available from the University of Nebraska Press.