“Chad Montrie's book restores complexity to the history of American environmentalist movements and does justice to the actions against the degradation of nature that have been forgotten by the historiography, too focused on the heroic story (or history) of a white and bourgeois (or middle-class) scientist. The risk of such a thesis would be to minimize the diagnosis and the action of Rachel Carson, but Chad Montrie recognizes at the same time her courage, her pugnacity and her determination. It is less a matter of denying her impact—recognized by the historiography—than of recalling the competing imaginaries and actions that have also worked for the protection of the environment, in a long history that precedes Rachel Carson, to show that the environment is not necessarily opposed to use (or utilization), and to introduce a social analysis to a trajectory of degradation (or alteration) of the environment that is not a process involving humanity as a whole.”
