UNC Press - DDT and the American Century

272 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 8 halftones, notes, bibl., index

Luther H. Hodges Jr. and Luther H. Hodges Sr. Series on Business, Entrepreneurship and Public Policy

Cloth

ISBN 978-0-8078-3509-8

Published: November 2011

Paper

ISBN 978-1-4696-0977-5

Available: August 2013

DDT and the American Century

Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide That Changed the World

By David Kinkela

Awards & Distinctions

2012 Forum for the History of Science in America Distinguished Publication Prize

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.

About the Author

David Kinkela is associate professor of history at the State University of New York-Fredonia.

Reviews

"Readers interested in the environment, public health, and international relations will find this book particularly timely. . . . A relevant and useful addition."
--Library Journal

"[Kinkela] presents DDT as a useful product with undesirable long-term ecological effects, requiring careful judgment about when to use it."
--Foreign Affairs

"This is a valuable book about a controversy that is still of critical importance. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals; general readers."
--Choice

"[Kinkela] has proved his fluency in intellectual, social, cultural, and policy history."
--Environmental History

"A valuable contribution to international environmental and public health history."
-- Journal of American History

"[A] well written, highly informative and useful book."
--European Journal of Entomology