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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.
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| 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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Miner writes fondly about western Kansas and weaves some of his family members, who lived there, into his story. Indeed, one reason Miner chose western Kansas as his subject was that his family ties made this place interesting and important to him. He is open about his attachment to his family and the place where his family lived for generations. Miner is also forthright about his interest in telling a local history, one that eschews analysis and argument. He believes that "there is all too much trendy technique" among historians, "too much upsetting the applecart of what has gone before with minimal justification" (p. xvi). Miner's goal is, in his words, to "reveal some of the fascination, interleavings, and stark profundities of the struggles" of western Kansas's people, and he attempts to do this largely through the presentation of information he gathered reading newspaper articles (p. xvii). |
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Because Miner relies so heavily on newspapers, his story emphasizes what newspapers emphasize and ignores what newspapers ignore. Thus he notes the fluctuating price of wheat, the construction of new roads and waterworks, even lynchings and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. He does not discuss, however, how farmers spent their days (other than driving their new tractors), how new technologies affected the work and leisure of farm women, or whether children in western Kansas spent more time in school or working on their parents' farms. Miner glosses over politics and does not provide information on farm size, tenancy, or the credit system. Neither does he attempt to make sense of the events and trends recounted in his newspapers. For example, he describes the dust storms that swept through western Kansas in the 1930s without explaining what caused these storms, why western Kansas was the heart of the dust bowl, or why these storms happened when they did. Readers who seek analysis of historical trends may find Next Year Country disappointing. Retelling the stories printed in newspapers without imposing shape on them is, however, Miner's goal. In this, he is successful. |
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Elizabeth Herbin is a postdoctoral fellow in agrarian studies at Yale University, where she is working on a book about responses to the decline of small farming in the American South. |
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