Tag: environmentalism

Review 2268: Silent Spring

~ whatmeread ~ 9 Comments

I have always intended to read Silent Spring, so its appearance on the list of books published in 1962 gave me a good reason to read it for the 1962 Club. However, publishing my review that week didn’t work out on my schedule. That being said, it works out to be a perfect read for Nonfiction November.

People probably realize that the book was largely responsible for the banning of DDT in the United States, but maybe don’t understand that much more about it.

Carson was a biologist in a time when that particular science was not highly regarded because of the fascination with physics and chemistry as a result of World War II. Particularly in the 1950s and 60s, blanket applications of pesticides and other chemicals seemed to have become the knee-jerk reaction to not only agriculture and forestry pest problems but also to problems of disease. What Carson accomplished in Silent Spring was to bring together the results of widely scattered studies to show that (1) the chemicals are deadly poisons, not just to insects but to all life; (2) applications of the chemicals have been largely ineffective and had unintended consequences; (3) continued application could result in the loss of all life; and (4) there are better solutions that are less costly for the same problems. She tells us about these issues in clear prose that instances many stories of failed or successful programs and experiments.

As I read this book, I had a clear memory of myself as a child riding my bike through a cloud of insecticide that was being sprayed from a truck being driven through my neighborhood. There was no sense on my part or apparently on the part of the sprayers that this could be harmful to me or anyone else outside at the time. Over the years, I’ve wondered why there seem to be more and more cases of cancer than there were when I was younger. Now I think I know why.

If you read this book, you’ll continue to be amazed at the instances where, after a disastrous application of pesticides by the Department of Agriculture to try to solve a problem, the next step was found to be . . . another application of pesticides. It’s a wonder there’s a creature left in our forests and fields, not to mention our waterways. This book is said to be the beginning of the environmental movement. I believe it.

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Review 2056: Bewilderment

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Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist whose job is to search for life on other worlds. He is also a bereft widower and the father of Robin, a troubled nine-year-old boy. Robin is kind and super-intelligent, very concerned about animals, but he is also hyper-anxious and prone to horrible fits of rage. He has received conflicting diagnoses, and Theo doesn’t want to subject his growing brain to psychotropic drugs.

After a few incidents at school, Theo is aware that he soon may be butting heads with social services. So, when Stryker, a scientist at the university where Theo works, offers Robin a place in his experimental but noninvasive treatment studies, Theo accepts. The treatments seem to work magically well, but at the same time Theo fears that Robin is becoming a different person.

Theo and his environmental activist wife have brought Robin up to appreciate the abundance and beauty of natural life, so some of the most beautiful moments in this novel come during their camp-outs. Theo also entertains Robin with bedtime stories about the kinds of life that may be on other planets.

Powers has created an absolutely convincing story about the inner life of a fragile boy and his father, who is trying very hard but who himself is unusual and slightly off-kilter. He has set it in a slightly dystopian time with a Trump-like president and a background of social and environmental disintegration. The references in the beginning to the novel Flowers for Algernon set the tone for where the novel is going and despite a few smiles, there is no doubt that it is going there. Here is another troubling novel from Powers, very sad and powerful.

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Review 1664: Greenwood

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Best of Ten!

Greenwood starts with an image of the cross-section of a tree trunk, this showing the novel’s structure. The novel begins in 2038, the outer ring of the tree, and visits four different years in the past, the center being 1908. Then it returns through each of those years to 2038.

In 2038, Jake Greenwood is an overqualified scientist working as a forest ranger in one of the few forests left on earth after the Great Wilt. She is glad to have the job in a world of excessively rich people and have-nots. Greenwood Island is a sort of private park that entertains the very wealthy by touring them through the forest.

Jake doesn’t think her family has a connection with the Greenwoods of the island, once owned by the fabulously wealthy lumber baron Harris Greenwood, but a lawyer arrives saying that she may have a claim to the island.

The novel returns back in time to visit Jake’s ancestors at important events in their lives. In 2008, Jake’s father Liam’s girlfriend leaves him and then lets him know she is pregnant. Later, doing a carpentry job, he has a serious accident.

In 1974, Liam’s mother Willow, an environmental activist, lives with Liam in her van and travels around sabotaging logging equipment.

In 1934, Everett, who makes a little money tapping and selling maple syrup, finds a baby hanging on a tree outside his cabin. Although he at first tries to give her away, he begins to think she’s in danger.

In 1908, two nine-year-old boys are the only survivors of a massive train wreck. When no one claims them, the town puts them in a cabin and provides the bare minimum of their needs, the boys growing up almost feral. The boys cannot remember their names, so the town calls them Harris and Everett Greenwood.

The novel is beautifully written and like The Overstory is concerned with trees and their impact on the world. Its descriptions of forests are lyrical. The plot itself is at times so involving as to read almost like a thriller. This is an unusual and absorbing novel.

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