This is the companion volume to Ken Burns' 2012 PBS program, but it's a fine work on its own merits. Startling photographs and detailed first-person accounts of life during the worst man-made ecological disaster our country has seen make for a fascinating read. I never knew, for example, that one particularly violent and long-lasting dust storm blew topsoil from the southern plains as far east as Washington, D.C., and right onto FDR's desk. Who's the villain? Drought, humankind, government agricultural practices? You decide.
