| Book Review | Environmental History, 13.1

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 13.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Next Year Country: Dust to Dust in Western Kansas, 1890–1940. By H. Craig Miner. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. xx + 370 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95.

In Craig Miner's engagingly written local history Next Year Country, residents of western Kansas face hardship after hardship, all the while keeping their chins up. The title of the book refers to the tendency among these people to focus their hopes on a better next year as they struggle to make a living in an inhospitable environment. The 1890s bring the people of western Kansas drought, extreme heat, fire, bitterly cold winters, and tornadoes. Wheat prices increase with World War I, ushering in prosperity, and farmers purchase cars and tractors—items they cannot afford when the Great Depression hits and the region turns into a "dust bowl." In Next Year Country, Miner describes the difficulties of life in western Kansas—the less populous half of the state west of what is now Interstate 35—as well as the ways that automobiles, tractors, irrigation projects, electric lighting, and other modern technologies transformed the area.

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