It is fifty years since the publication of A. Hunter Dupree’s Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities. No one would attempt such a project today, but after half a century the book still speaks to the present.

Donald Worster’s 1979 Dust Bowl was a pioneering exploration of a profound ecological and economic crisis. History, for Worster, involves place: that context in which stories unfold, whose contours are shaped both by nature and by technology.

Alfred Chandler’s magisterial history of the rise of big business in the United States remains a vibrant force in contemporary intellectual life. In helping us identify broadly felt, less resistible tendencies inherent in certain technologies, he helps us comprehend more clearly what remains in play.

“Although McLuhan’s name is no longer a buzzword in the popular vernacular—or even in the communication classroom—we are living in an era when [his] predictions . . . are in evidence all around us. His variety of technological determinism is instructive.”

Walter Prescott Webb’s The Great Plains cuts across geology, physiography, climatology, botany, zoology, anthropology, history, and literature to venture to the very boundaries of what historians are comfortable in calling history.