Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present
2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 104; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/jahist/jax292
ISSN1945-2314
Autores Tópico(s)American Environmental and Regional History
ResumoIn the opening pages of his history, Richard S. Newman describes the Love Canal chemical disaster site “as a celebrated and reviled toxic tomb” (p. 3). Newman recognizes the continuing salience Love Canal and its toxic chemicals have for contemporary society and seeks to place it within a broad context of misuse of the land that dates back to colonial times. He expresses concern, too, for the omission of Love Canal activists from major environmental histories. The work reasserts the importance of the community's response to the disaster, especially by its women. The best part of his story, however, is the one he emphasizes the least: the political consequences of this major, unprecedented human-made disaster. Part 1 examines the colonial antecedents of the area that would become Love Canal. This includes an extensive history of the physical origins of the future waste site as the nineteenth-century entrepreneur William Love sought to build a model city just outside Niagara Falls, New York, with cheap hydroelectric power. Part 2 focuses on Love Canal activism as community members became aware of the toxic chemicals in their midst, organized, and successfully relocated over nine hundred families. The concluding section of the book considers the lessons learned and ignored in telling about Love Canal today.
Referência(s)