Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Future Of The Great Plains Re-Visited, Gilbert F. White

Great Plains Quarterly

The Future of the Great Plains came in the mid- 1930s at the culmination of a great drought and a festering worldwide economic depression as new, ambitious Washington agencies sought to redress the accumulated wounds to people and soil. Following a series of more narrow reports, this comprehensive study presented the prevailing judgments as to what had gone wrong on the Great Plains. And it outlined a widely shared vision of what the future might hold if its social prescriptions were heeded. 1 Sceptics of the time wryly remarked that the animal on its front cover (a large bull, fig. …

The Dirty Thirties A Study In Agricultural Capitalism, Donald Worster

Great Plains Quarterly

"The history of any land begins with nature, and all histories must end with nature," J. Frank Dobie once wrote.' He was eloquently right, but until very recently such a view was not regarded seriously by academic historians, who commonly took nature for granted, beginning and ending their studies with an air of human omnipotence. That attitude, however, is becoming harder to maintain in innocence, as a group of ecologically informed historians challenge it. It is now more acceptable to say, with Dobie, that nature has played a stage-center role in the making of history the making of its setbacks …

Review Of Struggle And Hope: The Hungarian-Canadian Experience By N. F. Dreisziger With M. L. Kovacs, Paul Body, And Bennett Kovrig, Linda Dégh

Great Plains Quarterly

This book appears in the government sponsored series A History of Canada's Peoples, aiming at the general public's interest in the ethnic dimension of Canadian society. "Most Canadians belong to an ethnic group, since to do so is simply to 'have a sense of identity rooted in a common origin ... whether this common origin is real or imaginary' ... all have traditions and values that they cherish and that now are part of the cultural riches that Canadians share." Despite the reference to such subjective concepts as "identity," "tradition," and "values," the authors of ethnic extraction were instructed to …

River Conservancy And Agricultural Development Of The North China Plain And Loess Highlands Strategies And Research, Huang Bingwei

Great Plains Quarterly

The North China Plain is the Chinese counterpart to the North American Great Plains. This largest plain in China suffers frequently from drought. Although agricultural production has been significantly increased in recent years, it is still far too low and too unstable to compensate for population growth and the demands of a rising standard of living. One of the major factors limiting agricultural development on the North China Plain is drought. A complication is that not only have surface and underground water resources been utilized almost to their limits for agrarian needs but also water shortages due to rapidly mounting …

Comp Ara Tive Drought Strategies The Soviet Union, Paul E. Lydolph

Great Plains Quarterly

Background. It cannot be emphasized enough that the Soviet Union is a highlatitude country. Odessa on the Black Sea coast, one of Russia's southern cities, lies at a latitude of 46°N, comparable to that of Billings, Montana, and in fact is cooler in summer than Billings (Lydolph 1977b). Krasnodar in the Kuban District of the North Caucasus, probably the most productive region in the Soviet Union, compares latitudinally and climatically to St. Paul, Minnesota. Kharkov, in the northeastern Ukraine, compares to Winnipeg, Canada; in fact, Winnipeg experiences higher maximum temperatures in summer than Kharkov does. The central black earth region …

Notes & News

Great Plains Quarterly

CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

CALLS FOR PAPERS

GEORGE IRA HANSON TRUST

LECTURE SERIES

Abideth Forever? Global Use Of Semiarid Lands In The Interwar Years, J. M. Powell

Great Plains Quarterly

I have undertaken a highly selective Cook's Tour in this article, attempting to integrate our understanding of semiarid lands around the globe. The focus is concentrated on the period between the two great wars when new nationalisms, old imperial networks, and the burgeoning ambitions of scientists combined to create new systems of land use in the semiarid regions, but a few sorties have been made into earlier and later periods to assist the interpretation of specific projects. My own country, Australia, is used as the starting point for the tour, but the influence of American Donald Worster's Dust Bowl (1979) …

Adaptations To Adversity Agriculture, Climate And The Great Plains Of North America, Norman J. Rosenburg

Great Plains Quarterly

The climate of the Great Plains of the United States and Canada has presented a challenge to agrarians throughout the centuries. In this paper I discuss some of the major climatological hazards to agriculture in the plains and some of the technological defenses that North Americans have so far used to adapt to adverse weather and climate. I conclude with a consideration of the implications for Great Plains agriculture of a likely man-induced (or anthropogenic) climatic change following the expected further increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For the purposes of this paper, I have defined agricultural drought as …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly

INTERNATIONAL DROUGHT MITIGATION: AN INTRODUCTION (Donald A. Wilhite)

ABIDETH FOREVER? GLOBAL USE OF SEMIARID LANDS IN THE INTERWAR YEARS (]. M Powell)

ADAPTING THE ENVIRONMENT: RANCHING, IRRIGATION, AND DRY LAND FARMING IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA, 1880-1914 (A. A. den Otter)

RURAL SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN A SEMIARID AFRICAN COUNTRY: THE CASE OF BOTSWANA (Louise Fortmann)

ADAPTATIONS TO ADVERSITY: AGRICULTURE, CLIMATE AND THE GREAT PLAINS OF NORTH AMERICA (Norman J. Rosenberg)

RIVER CONSERVANCY AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTH CHINA PLAIN AND LOESS HIGHLANDS: STRATEGIES AND RESEARCH (Huang Bingwei)

DROUGHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA: REDUCING THE LOSSES BUT NOT REMOVING THE HAZARD (R. L. …

Review Of The Battle Of Batoche: British Small Warfare And The Entrenched Métis By Walter Hildebrandt, Paul L. A. H. Chartrand

Great Plains Quarterly

Metis readers will tend to react less than enthusiastically to even a fair portrayal of the military campaign which killed those whose deaths they commemorate in 1985. For that the author cannot be faulted. By his indiscriminate and unfortunate adoption of the colonizer's term "half-breed," however, he emphasizes that the traditional perception of the Metis remains.

Review Of Sophus K. Winther By Barbara Howard Meldrum, Joy Ritchie

Great Plains Quarterly

Sophus Winther, who documented the experience of Danish immigrants in the novel Take All to Nebraska, is often considered a strictly regional writer. Barbara Meldrum's analysis of Winther's fiction, political essays, and literary criticism provides evidence of a philosophical consistency and depth in Winther's writing which transcends regional boundaries. Writing about immigrants in rural settings, workers in modern cities, the soldier/ hero in post-war fiction, or about Eugene O'Neill's plays, Winther focuses on the individual struggle against the oppressiveness of physical and economic environments.

Review Of Now That The Buffalo's Gone: A Study Of Today's American Indians By Alvin M. Josephy, Jr, William H. Graves

Great Plains Quarterly

Alvin Josephy's statement that this book is the "culmination of thirty years of association" with American Indians (p. xi) explains its purpose and reveals the difficulty of trying to evaluate it. It is a study of today's Indians, their concerns, needs, and problems. It is historical, journalistic, personal, and revealing. Josephy, former editor of American Heritage magazine, is the author of several books on American Indians, including the highly regarded Patriot Chiefs. His writing style is smooth, graceful, persuasive and readable. He writes with refreshing sensitivity and his grasp of contemporary Indian issues is impressive.