Worster taught at Brandeis University from 1971, becoming Meyerhoff Professor of American Environmental Studies.

He came to the University of Kansas in 1989 to occupy the Hall Chair in American History, thus returning to his undergraduate institution and his home region.

[3] Throughout his career, Worster has written several books including The Wealth of Nature; Under Western Skies; Rivers of Empire; Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s; A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir; Nature's Economy; and A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell.

He also has strong interests in comparative history (especially of the U.S. and Canada), in American regionalism (particularly the West), in agriculture, and in science and technology.

[5] "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.