Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of Gennan-Russian Folk Architecture In Southeastern South Dakota By Michael Koop And Stephen Ludwig, Roger L. Welsch

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This is a modest but invaluable introduction for a larger research problem that should be attacked soon, before the artifacts are gone. The authors carefully describe architectural artifacts, providing historic and geographic contexts. There are drawings and photos that provide full detail of the items. Everyone who is interested in ethnic folklore, material culture, or German-Russians will want to have this book.

The Dust Bowl An Introduction, John Braeman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In March 1985 the Center for Great Plains Studies of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln held its ninth annual symposium "Social Adaptation to Semiarid Environments." The relevance of that topic was evident alike to specialists and to the reader of daily newspaper stories about drought and accompanying starvation in Africa, recurring crop failures in Russia, China's struggle to feed its teeming population, out-of-control grassland fires in Australia, and depletion of ground water supplies and continued soil erosion in the North American Great Plains. Specialists in a broad range of disciplines explored the ways in which different societies have adjusted in the …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

THE DUST BOWL: AN INTRODUCTION (John Braeman)

WHO WAS "FOREST MAN?" SOURCES OF MIGRATION TO THE PLAINS (John C. Hudson)

THE FUTURE OF THE GREAT PLAINS RE-VISITED (Gilbert F. White)

FEDERAL LAND RECLAMATION IN THE DUST BOWL (R. Douglas Hurt)

THE DIRTY THIRTIES: A STUDY IN AGRICULTURAL CAPITALISM (Donald Worster)

DUST BOWL HISTORIOGRAPHY (Harry C. McDean)

THE DUST BOWL: HISTORICAL IMAGE, PSYCHOLOGICAL ANCHOR, AND ECOLOGICAL TABOO (William E. Riebsame)

BOOK REVIEWS

Struggle and Hope: The Hungarian-Canadian Experience

NOTES & NEWS

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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. …

Rural Social Organization In A Semiarid African Country The Case Of Botswana, Louise Formann

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Environmental determinism has long been discredited in explaining the social organization of pastoral and agro-pastoral peoples. I Today the effect of climate on social organization is recognized as mediated by social, economic, and political factors. 2 Thus, social organization in Botswana reflects the influence of a wide variety of factors, among them Christian missionaries, interethnic warfare, past and continuing aggression of South Africa, introduction of the iron plow, British colonialism, Boer traders, discovery of minerals (most recently diamonds), international donor aid, and so on. Over the past century there have been substantial changes in a number of important trends: life …

Drought Mitigation In Australia Reducing The Losses But Not Removing The Hazard, R. L. Heathcote

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Australia technology has reduced but not eliminated the impact of drought and seems set to do the same for the foreseeable CO2-induced climate change. To document this claim, I wish here to consider first a brief history of drought in Australia-pointing up some parallels and contrasts with the North American experience; second, to outline the various strategies (technological and nontechnological) that have been adopted to try to mitigate drought; third, to review the current thinking on the effect of increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 on the Australian climate and their releva9ce to agricultural and pastoral activities through possible modification …

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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 …

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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 (through 2013)

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 …

International Drought Mitigation An Introduction, Donald A. Wilhite

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This special issue of Great Plains Quarterly includes the papers from the international sessions of the symposium, beginning with the keynote address by J. M. Powell, "Abideth Forever?" Global Use of Semiarid Lands in the Interwar Years." Powell's thesis is that the new nationalisms, old imperial networks, and burgeoning successes and ambitions of scientists combined between the two world wars to create new systems of land use in semiarid regions. In his introduction, Powell poses an interesting question: Were decisions about the management of these fragile ecosystems developed within the region as a result of experience, or outside the region …

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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 (through 2013)

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.