The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was not a natural disaster. It was a man-made catastrophe created when millions of acres of native grassland across the American Great Plains were recklessly plowed under to plant wheat, destroying the root systems that had held the soil in place for thousands of years. When drought arrived, as it periodically does on the Plains, there was nothing left to prevent the earth itself from becoming airborne. The resulting dust storms were among the most devastating environmental events in American history, and they were entirely preventable. The destruction of the Plains grasslands was driven by a perfect storm of economic incentive, technological capability, and willful ignorance. World War I had sent wheat prices soaring, and the development of gasoline-powered tractors allowed farmers to plow vastly more acreage than horse- ...