How Not to Save the Planet

About a hundred pages into historian Douglas Brinkley’s Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, I almost gave up. It was so palpably and relentlessly a story of Heroes & Villains: the heroes perfect in their heroism, and the villains equally absolute in their villainy. For Brinkley, if you’re an advocate for environmental protection or an opponent of nuclear weapons, you’re on the side of the angels; even Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. comes out of this book looking like a candidate for beatification.