DDT and the American Century

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.

The new edition of this classic text on modern U.S. history brings the story of contemporary America into the second decade of the twenty-first century with new coverage of the Obama presidency and the 2012 elections. Written by three highly respected scholars, the book seamlessly blends political, social, cultural, intellectual, and economic themes into an authoritative and readable account of our increasingly complex national story. The seventh edition retains its affordability and conciseness while continuing to add the most recent scholarship. Each chapter contains a special feature section devoted to cultural topics including the arts and architecture, sports and recreation, technology and education. Adding to the readers' learning experience is the addition of web links to each of these features, providing numerous complementary visual study tools. These links become live, and illustrations appear in full color, in the ebook edition. An American Century instructor site provides instructors who adopt the book with high interest features--illustrations, photos, maps, quizzes, an elaboration of key themes in the book, PowerPoint presentations, and lecture launchers on topics including the Versailles Conference, the "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Tet Offensive, and the prospects for a Second American Century. In addition, students have free access to a multimedia primary source archive of materials carefully selected to support the themes of each chapter.

Offers cutting-edge perspectives on how international development has shaped the global history of the modern world.

The new edition of this classic text on modern U.S. history seamlessly blends political, social, cultural, intellectual, and economic themes into an authoritative and readable account of America’s national story since the 1890s. Written by four highly respected scholars, this book has been fully updated with new coverage of the Trump and Biden presidencies, the culture wars, deep political polarization, and the crisis of democracy. The text’s most distinctive quality is its close attention to both history within the United States and the relationships the country has forged with the rest of the world. The eighth edition remains engaging and approachable while continuing to include the most recent scholarship. Each chapter contains a special feature section devoted to cultural topics including the arts and architecture, sports and recreation, technology, and education. Web links to additional online resources accompany each feature, offering complementary learning opportunities to students. While carefully attending to the complexity of history, The American Century traces the long roots of some of the most pressing current issues in the United States and continues to be a compelling resource for students of recent American history.

In general, “development” denotes movement or growth toward something better in the future. International development—widespread in the decades following World War II—was an effort at purposeful changein landscapes around the world. Contributors to this volume argue that these projects constituted an effort to transplant modernity, such as knowledge or technology, from places seen as more developed to places perceived as un- or underdeveloped. During its heyday, international development included not just dams, roads, health programs, and agricultural projects but also animal husbandry schemes, urban development, and wildlife protection plans. Projects often succeeded or failed because of existing environmental conditions, and in turn, these programs remade—or tried to remake—the land, water, wildlife, and people around them. From American-directed failures in water engineering in Afghanistan to the impact of livestock epidemics on economic growth in East Africa, the chapters in Transplanting Modernity question how science, technology, and faith in Western notions of progress have influenced the pace, scope, and scale of development.

**The instant New York Times bestseller.** *An international bestseller.* Finalist for the Lane Anderson Award Finalist for the RBC Taylor Award “Hugely impressive, a major work.”—NPR A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power. The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village. Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter? Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable. Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito’s reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.

"Exploring over a century of Zimbabwe's colonial and post-colonial history, Elijah Doro investigates the murky and noxious history of that powerful crop: tobacco. In a compelling narrative that debunks previous histories glorifying tobacco farming, Doro reveals the indelible marks that tobacco left on landscapes, communities, and people. Demonstrating that the history of tobacco farming is inseparable from that of colonial encounter, Doro outlines how tobacco became an institutionalised culture of production, which was linked to state power and natural ecosystems, and driven by a pernicious heritage of unbridled plunder. With the destruction of landscapes, the negative impacts of the export trade and the growing tobacco epidemic in Zimbabwe, tobacco farming has a long and varied legacy in southern African and across the world. Connecting the local to the global, and the environmental to the social, this book illuminates our understandings of environmental history, colonialism and sustainability"--

This book examines the practices of contesting evidence in democratically constituted knowledge societies. It provides a multifaceted view of the processes and conditions of evidence criticism and how they determine the dynamics of de- and re-stabilization of evidence. Evidence is an essential resource for establishing claims of validity, resolving conflicts, and legitimizing decisions. In recent times, however, evidence is being contested with increasing frequency. Such contestations vary in form and severity – from questioning the interpretation of data or the methodological soundness of studies to accusations of evidence fabrication. The contributors to this volume explore which actors, for what reasons and to what effect, question evidence in fields such as the biological, environmental and health sciences. In addition to actors inside academia, they examine the roles of various other players, including citizen scientists, counter-experts, journalists, patients, consumers and activists. The contributors tackle questions of how disagreements are framed and how they are used to promote vested interests. By drawing on methodological and theoretical approaches from a wide range of fields, this book provides a much-needed perspective on how evidence criticism influences the development and state of knowledge societies and their political condition. Evidence Contestation will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, epistemology, bioethics, science and technology studies, the history of science and technology and science communication.