DDT and the American Century: Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide That Changed the World by David Kinkela (review)

book reviews DDT and the American Century: Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide That Changed the World David Kinkela. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 2013. 272 pp. 8 halftones, notes, bibl., index. $30.00 paper (ISBN 978-1-4696-0977-5) nathan satcher The University of Southern Mississippi Pesticides have been some of the most controversial substances implemented in modern American history. Following World War II, there was a significant increase in agricultural chemicals which changed the country's environments, social relationships, and politics. These chemicals gave American farmers new weapons in the ongoing war against weeds, insects, and diseases that were constantly being waged on crops. This growth of pesticides, particularly DDT, also influenced ideas about agricultural health both on domestic and international soil. Along with American farmers, communities in South American, Asia, and Europe discovered the valuable protection of these substances. Diseases that had long plagued nations like that of malaria and typhus fever had become controllable. However, these pesticides acted as a double-edged sword, poisoning as much as they protected. Though many warnings had been issued by scientists before Rachel Carson, her book Silent Spring (1962) solidified the dangers of pesticide use, which led to the beginnings of an environmental movement that reevaluated the use of pesticides and its effects on the environment. Though many scholars have provided insights into the domestic effects of pesticides, few have addressed how these toxic substances have shaped international relationships and environments throughout the mid-twentieth century. Several other scholars have explored the rise and fall of DDT, with its eventual domestic ban in the United States in the early 1970's. In David Kinkela's book, DDT and the American Century, he recognizes that the story of DDT is a diverse story that requires...