The Dust Bowl companion book released

THE DUST BOWL: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY 

In this riveting chronicle, which accompanies a documentary to be broadcast on PBS in the fall, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns capture the profound drama of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. 

Terrifying photographs of mile-high dust storms, along with firsthand accounts by more than two dozen eyewitnesses, bring to life this heart-wrenching catastrophe, when a combination of drought, wind, and poor farming practices turned millions of acres of the Great Plains into a wasteland, killing crops and livestock, threatening the lives of small children, burying homesteaders' hopes under huge dunes of dirt.

 Burns and Duncan collected more than 300 mesmerizing photographs, some never before published, scoured private letters, government reports, and newspaper articles, and conducted in-depth interviews to produce a document that may likely be the last recorded testimony of the generation who lived through this defining decade.

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Amarillo Museum of Art hosts Dust Bowl era photos

Dust and Depression: Farm Security Administration Photographs from the 1930s October 3 - December 9, 2012

Dust and Depression: Farm Security Administration Photographs from the 1930s takes viewers on a journey back to a time of historic economic crises, when Americans experienced dire financial crises due to the 1929 Wall Street crash and record draughts that crippled the nation’s agricultural production.

Sixty black-and-white images from the museum’s permanent collection feature works by nationally renowned photographers John Collier, Jr., Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, and Ben Shahn.

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was one of several federally-funded New Deal economic programs enacted during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency to provide relief to the economically disadvantaged, support economic recovery, and reform the financial system behind the Depression.

Part of the Historic division of FSA, the photography project not only created a “visual encyclopedia of American life” but also through mass media outlets like magazines and newspaper informed the public about the plight of fellow citizens nationwide and often facilitated government action to address their needs.