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elmonoenano t1_jcau38d wrote

I took a stab at Douglas Brinkley's Silent Spring Revolution. It's not really a topic I'm interested in. I'm not anti environmentalist or anything silly, it's just a big topic and I always felt like I could either learn a lot about 2 or 3 other topics or spend as much time and learn a little bit about environmentalism. So, this wasn't exactly the most interesting thing to me. I had to read it for a book club. I only made it about 2/3s of the way through, but it's about 700 pages before you get to the notes.

So, for something I don't really love, it drew me in for a good 400 pages. If the history of environmentalism is important to you this is a good book. Brinkley is a great writer, I loved his book on Katrina. I can't say I really learned a lot though, maybe b/c the history is so recent. It was within the common memory while I was growing up that lakes and rivers were full of pollution and human shit and would catch fire and cause outbreaks and that the air was awful. I remember whole months where it was so bad that visibility was measured less than a football field.

So I think maybe people born in the 80s or later would get more out of it. If you are interested in the history of the environmental movement in the US after WWII then I would definitely recommend this.

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