It is my great pleasure to announce the publication of Sebastian Braun’s Bearing the Bearing the Burden of Booms: Energy, Extraction, Communities and Landscapes on the Plains. 

It is the third book on the Bakken to have come out from The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota and a major contribution to ongoing conversation on the impact of the 21st century North Dakota oil boom on the past, present, and future of the state.

It is also timely.

Recent news that Continental Resources, one of the stalwarts of the Bakken, has paused drilling caused anxieties across the state. On the other hand, Sunday’s jump in oil prices with the bombing of Iran has created opportunities for domestic producers, customer concerns, and a violent reminder of the price we pay for petroleum.

Check out the new book here.

The full media release comes below the fold.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Book on the Bakken Brings Home the Burden of Oil Booms

The Bakken oil boom may well be a fading memory to the national media, but it continues to impact residents of western North Dakota. Sebastian Felix Braun’s new book, Bearing the Burden of Booms: Energy, Extraction, Communities and Landscapes on the Plains, reflects years of field work in the Bakken oil patch and extracts crucial lessons from those who experienced the boom. Braun is Director of American Indian Studies and Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University.

Bearing the Burden of Booms unpacks the complex cultural, social, and environmental impact of the early-21st century Bakken oil boom across the North Dakota landscape. To do this, Braun draws upon years of research in Bakken communities. He gathered dozens of interviews, analyzed political and industry messaging, and developed a deep familiarity with indigenous attitudes toward oil and the environment. Combining this research with the economics of hydraulic fracturing allowed Braun to ask the question whether the cultural, social, and ecological disruptions of the boom were and are worth it.

Braun recalls, “when I started doing research in the Bakken around 2010, I became interested in a question very few people seemed to ask at the time: what will happen to the communities when the boom is over? In order to understand this, of course, we have to know what the boom does in the first place. I am not sure the book can deliver an answer to the original question, but it aims to discuss resource extraction booms from a variety of different perspectives, and I hope the reader can find some answers in that.”

The diversity of perspectives in Bearing the Burden of Booms makes it a unique contribution to the small, but significant body of work on the Bakken and resource booms more broadly. This book also stands out because it recognizes the urgency facing communities today as the speed and frequency of resource booms accelerates with improving technology and global connectivity.

For Braun, “this book, and others like it, is important right now because we are facing the most important question perhaps in the history of our societies: should we continue to live in a way that is destructive to landscapes, communities, and ourselves in order for some of us to live comfortably and amass wealth, or should we change to another way of life? I hope communities can use it to be in a position to make their own decisions.”

This is the third book focusing on the Bakken oil boom published by The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. Publisher William Caraher remarks: “The Digital Press has established itself the leading publisher on the Bakken and the social impact of oil more broadly. It’s an honor to publish this latest installment alongside my edited volume The Bakken Goes Boom and Kyle Conway’s Sixty Years of Boom and Bust.“

Like all book published by The Digital Press, this book will be available as both a free download and a low-cost paperback. For more on this book go here: https://thedigitalpress.org/booms/