Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the World in the 20th Century (Allen Lane History) - Hardcover

John Robert McNeill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713994622 ISBN 13: 9780713994629

Publisher: Allen Lane/The Penquin Press, 2000

Synopsis

A landmark work of environmental history told in an absorbing narrative style. J. R. McNeill's startling history explores the massive change we have brought to our physical world in this century. To a degree unprecedented in human history, we have refashioned the very air, water, and soil we inhabit. McNeill tells this story with a keen eye for character and a refreshing respect for the unforeseen in history. He tells us of Thomas Midgely, the chemical engineer who indirectly did more damage to the atmosphere than any other human being: Midgely discovered that adding lead to gasoline made it burn better, and he followed that breakthrough with the invention of Freon, which ruptures the ozone layer when it drifts into the stratosphere. Also surprising, but more hopeful, is the story of how Japan transformed itself from a polluter's paradise through 1965 to a country of clean air twenty years later without sacrificing economic performance. Through his history of people and the planet in this global century, McNeill shows us that environmental degradation is reversible, and historical change open-ended. This is a volume in The Global Century Series, general editor, Paul Kennedy.

About this title

Review:

J.R. McNeill, a professor of history at Georgetown University, visits the annals of the past century only to return to the present with bad news: in that 100-year span, he writes, the industrialized and developing nations of the world have wrought damage to nearly every part of the globe. That much seems obvious to even the most casual reader, but what emerges, and forcefully, from McNeill's pages is just how extensive that damage has been. For example, he writes, "soil degradation in one form or another now affects one-third of the world's land surface," larger by far than the world's cultivated areas. Things are worse in some places than in others; McNeill observes that Africa is "the only continent where food production per capita declined after 1960," due to the loss of productive soil. McNeill's litany continues: the air in most of the world's cities is perilously unhealthy; the drinking water across much of the planet is growing ever more polluted; the human species is increasingly locked "in a rigid and uneasy bond with modern agriculture," which trades the promise of abundant food for the use of carcinogenic pesticides and fossil fuels.

The environmental changes of the last century, McNeill closes by saying, are on an unprecedented scale, so much so that we can scarcely begin to fathom their implications. We can, however, start to think about them, and McNeill's book is a helpful primer. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

J. R. McNeill is professor of history at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Mountains of the Mediterranean World and other works.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane/The Penquin Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0713994622
• ISBN 13: 9780713994629
• Binding: Hardcover