It scares them because of the forced intimacy with a place that gives nothing back to a stranger, a place where the land and its weather – probably the most violent and extreme on earth – demand only one thing: humility.
-- Narrator (Introduction)

Importance: This quote captures the terrain where the dust bowl developed.

I was born upon the prairie where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun… I want to die there, and not within walls… The white man has taken the country we loved and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die.
-- Ten Bears (Chapter 1)

Importance: The Comanche chief put into words the simple life that his tribe desired and that their land had been taken from them by the white man.

Americans are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of the land.
-- Herbert Hoover (Chapter 3)

Importance: These were the words of...