Of course, everybody knows the Dust Bowl happened.  And you know, the whole Steinbeck thing.

But if someone had asked me if I knew all of the states in the Dust Bowl and exactly why the Dust Bowl happened and how they got the conditions to change, then  I wouldn’t have been able to give a very good answer.  Oh, something vague and in the ballpark, but not very close.

Then I watched this.

I am a huge fan of Ken Burns, and this documentary utterly fascinated me.  But what can I say, I’m somewhat of a history geek.

This is definitely not the feel-good documentary of the year, and some of the tales of loss will crush your heart.  Even my husband, big tough guy that he is, found himself in tears at some points.  However, there was one survivor who had such perfect timing, and who gave us an enormous laugh where we never expected it.

But the fact is, I had no idea that the scale of the disaster was so huge, so all-encompassing, and I feel like I made up a very large gap in my American History.  I also learned something I found extremely shocking regarding The Grapes of Wrath and the genesis of the novel.

This is definitely appropriate to watch with teens, your MMV.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2012 at 1:14 am by Glinda and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.