Magnificent FailureIn words that are as clean and precise as his haunting, starkly beautiful photographs, the author vividly recreates the life and times of the Western Homestead Era, that period beginning around 1885 when the prairie lands lying westward from the longitude of the western Dakotas became available to pioneering farmers. Some 70 black and white duotone photographs, with detailed captions, record the bleak landscapes and the abandoned farms, outbuildings,