The Man Who Taught the Dust to Bloom

In April 1935, Hugh Hammond Bennett stood before a skeptical United States Senate, pleading for a radical new approach to saving America's ravaged Great Plains. The Dust Bowl had turned the heartland into a wasteland — topsoil stripped away, farms buried under drifts of sand, families fleeing westward with nothing but desperation and a suitcase. Bennett knew a dust storm was rolling toward Washington that very afternoon.…