Ddt And The American Century

Author : David Kinkela
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2011-11-07
Category : History
ISBN : 0807869309

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DDT and the American Century by David Kinkela Pdf

Praised for its ability to kill insects effectively and cheaply and reviled as an ecological hazard, DDT continues to engender passion across the political spectrum as one of the world's most controversial chemical pesticides. In DDT and the American Century, David Kinkela chronicles the use of DDT around the world from 1941 to the present with a particular focus on the United States, which has played a critical role in encouraging the global use of the pesticide. Kinkela's study offers a unique approach to understanding both this contentious chemical and modern environmentalism in an international context.

Author : Rachel Carson
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2020-03-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780141994000

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Silent Spring by Rachel Carson Pdf

Now recognized as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, Silent Spring exposed the destruction of wildlife through the widespread use of pesticides Rachel Carson's Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Despite condemnation in the press and heavy-handed attempts by the chemical industry to ban the book, Carson succeeded in creating a new public awareness of the environment which led to changes in government and inspired the ecological movement. It is thanks to this book, and the help of many environmentalists, that harmful pesticides such as DDT were banned from use in the US and countries around the world. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Lord Shackleton, a preface by World Wildlife Fund founder Julian Huxley, and an afterword by Carson's biographer Linda Lear.

Author : Thomas Dunlap
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2017-08-24
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780295998954

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DDT, Silent Spring, and the Rise of Environmentalism by Thomas Dunlap Pdf

No single event played a greater role in the birth of modern environmentalism than the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and its assault on insecticides. The documents collected by Thomas Dunlap trace shifting attitudes toward DDT and pesticides in general through a variety of sources: excerpts from scientific studies and government reports, advertisements from industry journals, articles from popular magazines, and the famous �Fable for Tomorrow� from Silent Spring. Beginning with attitudes toward nature at the turn of the twentieth century, the book moves through the use and early regulation of pesticides; the introduction and early success of DDT; the discovery of its environmental effects; and the uproar over Silent Spring. It ends with recent debates about DDT as a potential solution to malaria in Africa.

Author : Bob H. Reinhardt
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Politics, Practical
ISBN : 1469624095

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The End of a Global Pox by Bob H. Reinhardt Pdf

By the mid-twentieth century, smallpox had vanished from North America and Europe but continued to persist throughout Africa, Asia, and South America. In 1965, the United States joined an international effort to eradicate the disease, and after fifteen years of steady progress, the effort succeeded. Bob H. Reinhardt demonstrates that the fight against smallpox drew American liberals into new and complex relationships in the global Cold War, as he narrates the history of the only cooperative international effort to successfully eliminate a human disease. Unlike other works that have chronicled the fight against smallpox by offering a "biography" of the disease or employing a triumphalist narrative of a public health victory, The End of a Global Pox examines the eradication program as a complex exercise of American power. Reinhardt draws on methods from environmental, medical, and political history to interpret the global eradication effort as an extension of U.S. technological, medical, and political power. This book demonstrates the far-reaching manifestations of American liberalism and Cold War ideology and sheds new light on the history of global public health and development.

Author : Stephen J. Macekura,Erez Manela
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2018-09-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781316515884

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The Development Century by Stephen J. Macekura,Erez Manela Pdf

Offers cutting-edge perspectives on how international development has shaped the global history of the modern world.

Author : Jennifer Thomson
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2019-03-27
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781469651651

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The Wild and the Toxic by Jennifer Thomson Pdf

Health figures centrally in late twentieth-century environmental activism. There are many competing claims about the health of ecosystems, the health of the planet, and the health of humans, yet there is little agreement among the likes of D.C. lobbyists, grassroots organizers, eco-anarchist collectives, and science-based advocacy organizations about whose health matters most, or what health even means. In this book, Jennifer Thomson untangles the complex web of political, social, and intellectual developments that gave rise to the multiplicity of claims and concerns about environmental health. Thomson traces four strands of activism from the 1970s to the present: the environmental lobby, environmental justice groups, radical environmentalism and bioregionalism, and climate justice activism. By focusing on health, environmentalists were empowered to intervene in the rise of neoliberalism, the erosion of the regulatory state, and the decimation of mass-based progressive politics. Yet, as this book reveals, an individualist definition of health ultimately won out over more communal understandings. Considering this turn from collective solidarity toward individual health helps explain the near paralysis of collective action in the face of planetary disaster.

Author : Jenny Leigh Smith,Tom Robertson
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2023-10-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9780822987802

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Transplanting Modernity? by Jenny Leigh Smith,Tom Robertson Pdf

Calls for an Honest Reckoning of the Successes, Failures, and Unanticipated Results of International Developments In general, “development” denotes movement or growth toward something better in the future. International development—widespread in the decades following World War II—was an effort at purposeful change in landscapes around the world. Contributors to this volume argue that these projects constituted an effort to transplant modernity, such as knowledge or technology, from places seen as more developed to places perceived as un- or underdeveloped. During its heyday, international development included not just dams, roads, health programs, and agricultural projects but also animal husbandry schemes, urban development, and wildlife protection plans. Projects often succeeded or failed because of existing environmental conditions, and in turn, these programs remade—or tried to remake—the land, water, wildlife, and people around them. From American-directed failures in water engineering in Afghanistan to the impact of livestock epidemics on economic growth in East Africa, the chapters in Transplanting Modernity question how science, technology, and faith in Western notions of progress have influenced the pace, scope, and scale of development.

Author : Charles F. Wurster
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2015-06-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780190219420

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DDT Wars by Charles F. Wurster Pdf

DDT Wars is the untold inside story of the decade-long scientific, legal and strategic campaign that culminated in the national ban of the insecticide DDT in 1972. The widespread misinformation, disinformation and mythology of the DDT issue are corrected in this book. DDT contamination had become worldwide, concentrating up food chains and causing birds to lay thin-shelled eggs that broke in the nests. Populations of many species of predatory and fish-eating birds collapsed, including the American Bald Eagle, Osprey, Peregrine Falcon and Brown Pelican. Their numbers recovered spectacularly in the decades following the ban. During the campaign DDT and five other insecticides were found to cause cancer in laboratory tests, which led to bans of these six pesticides by international treaty in 2001. This campaign produced lasting changes in American pesticide policies. The legal precedents broke down the court "standing" barrier, forming the basis for the development of environmental law as we know it today. This case history represents one of the greatest environmental victories of recent decades. DDT is still "controversial" because it has been deceptively interjected into the "climate wars." This campaign was led by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), founded in 1967 by ten citizens, most of them scientists, volunteers without special political connections or financial resources. Their strategy was to take environmental problems to court. There were many setbacks along the way in this exciting and entertaining story. The group was often kicked out of court, but a few determined citizens made a large difference for environmental protection and public health. Author Charles Wurster was one of the leaders of the campaign. The first six years of EDF history are described as it struggled to survive. Now EDF is one of the world's great environmental advocacy organizations defending our climate, ecosystems, oceans and public health.

Author : Megan Raby
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2017-10-03
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781469635613

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American Tropics by Megan Raby Pdf

Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.

Author : Walter LaFeber,Richard Polenberg,Nancy Woloch
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 768 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2015-02-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317478393

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The American Century by Walter LaFeber,Richard Polenberg,Nancy Woloch Pdf

The new edition of this classic text on modern U.S. history brings the story of contemporary America into the second decade of the twenty-first century with new coverage of the Obama presidency and the 2012 elections. Written by three highly respected scholars, the book seamlessly blends political, social, cultural, intellectual, and economic themes into an authoritative and readable account of our increasingly complex national story. The seventh edition retains its affordability and conciseness while continuing to add the most recent scholarship. Each chapter contains a special feature section devoted to cultural topics including the arts and architecture, sports and recreation, technology and education. Adding to the readers' learning experience is the addition of web links to each of these features, providing numerous complementary visual study tools. These links become live, and illustrations appear in full color, in the ebook edition. An American Century instructor site provides instructors who adopt the book with high interest features--illustrations, photos, maps, quizzes, an elaboration of key themes in the book, PowerPoint presentations, and lecture launchers on topics including the Versailles Conference, the "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Tet Offensive, and the prospects for a Second American Century. In addition, students have free access to a multimedia primary source archive of materials carefully selected to support the themes of each chapter.

Author : Walter F. LaFeber,Richard Polenberg,Nancy Woloch
Publisher : M.E. Sharpe
Page : 626 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : United States
ISBN : 9780765629012

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The American Century by Walter F. LaFeber,Richard Polenberg,Nancy Woloch Pdf

Author : Naomi Oreskes,Erik M. Conway
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2011-10-03
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9781408828779

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Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes,Erik M. Conway Pdf

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. These scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly-some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.

Author : Frederick Rowe Davis
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2014-11-28
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780300210378

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Banned by Frederick Rowe Davis Pdf

Rachel Carson’s eloquent book Silent Spring stands as one of the most important books of the twentieth century and inspired important and long-lasting changes in environmental science and government policy. Frederick Rowe Davis thoughtfully sets Carson’s study in the context of the twentieth century, reconsiders her achievement, and analyzes its legacy in light of toxic chemical use and regulation today. Davis examines the history of pesticide development alongside the evolution of the science of toxicology and tracks legislation governing exposure to chemicals across the twentieth century. He affirms the brilliance of Carson’s careful scientific interpretations drawing on data from university and government toxicologists. Although Silent Spring instigated legislation that successfully terminated DDT use, other warnings were ignored. Ironically, we replaced one poison with even more toxic ones. Davis concludes that we urgently need new thinking about how we evaluate and regulate pesticides in accounting for their ecological and human toll.

Author : Erika Marie Bsumek,David Kinkela,Mark Atwood Lawrence
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2013-04-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199793075

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Nation-States and the Global Environment by Erika Marie Bsumek,David Kinkela,Mark Atwood Lawrence Pdf

Hardly a day passes without journalists, policymakers, academics, or scientists calling attention to the worldwide scale of the environmental crisis confronting humankind. While climate change has generated the greatest alarm in recent years, other global problems-desertification, toxic pollution, species extinctions, drought, and deforestation, to name just a few-loom close behind. The scope of the most pressing environmental problems far exceeds the capacity of individual nation-states, much less smaller political entities. To compound these problems, economic globalization, the growth of non-governmental activist groups, and the accelerating flow of information have fundamentally transformed the geopolitical landscape. Despite the new urgency of these challenges, however, they are not without historical precedent. As this book shows, nation-states have long sought agreements to manage migratory wildlife, just as they have negotiated conventions governing the exploitation of rivers and other bodies of water. Similarly, nation-states have long attempted to control resources beyond their borders, to impose their standards of proper environmental exploitation on others, and to draw on expertise developed elsewhere to cope with environmental problems at home. This collection examines this little-understood history, providing case studies and context to inform ongoing debates.

Author : Carolyn Finney
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781469614489

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Black Faces, White Spaces by Carolyn Finney Pdf

Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors