Donald Worster

Donald Worster (born 1941) is a historian at the University of Kansas Department of History.

Worster received a Bachelor of Arts in 1963 and a Master of Arts in 1964 from the University of Kansas. He continued his education at Yale University, earning an M.Phil. in 1970 and a PhD. in 1971. He is considered one of the founders of, and leading figures in, the field of environmental history; and in 2009, he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Bibliography

• A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir (2008) ISBN 0-1951-6682-5
• A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (2002) ISBN 0-1951-5635-8
• An Unsettled Country: Changing Landscapes of the American West (1994) ISBN 0-8263-1481-3
• The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (1994) ISBN 0-19-507624-9
• Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (1985) ISBN 0-1950-7806-3, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
• Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979) ISBN 0-19-502550-4, which won a Bancroft Prize and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
• Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (1977) ISBN 0-87156-197-2

Quotes

"Whatever terrain the environmental historian chooses to investigate, he has to address the age-old predicament of how humankind can feed itself without degrading the primal source of life. Today as ever, that problem is the fundamental challenge in human ecology, and meeting it will require knowing the earth well--knowing its history and knowing its limits."

External links

• University of Kansas faculty page - Worster's biography
• 2008 Q&A on Worster's biographies of John Wesley Powell and John Muir
• Interview with Worster on "New Books in History"