Smoke and Mirrors The Politics and Culture of Air Pollution

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction. Arguing the importance of the social dimensions of air pollution issues, this collection of 15 original essays addresses a wide range of topics ranging from the perception of the pollution in Victorian England to automotive pollution control in prewar Germany to pesticide drift in modern California. Several essays are provocative. well written, and richly detailed; others are vignettes.-Choice Given this ambitious study, air pollution can no longer be understood simply as an issue of economics, science, and engineering, but one that implicates fundamental values and controveries surrounding justice, fairness, and the construction of knowledge. -Gary Bryner, Brigham Young University Informative and readable original essays. -Evergreen Monthly Who gets to breathe clean air? Who benefits from the cheaper products produced with dirty air? The answers, as the contributors to Smoke and Mirrors tell us, are sometimes as gray as the air itself. From the coal factory chimneys in Manchester in the late nineteenth century to the smog hanging over Los Angeles in the late twentieth century, air pollution has long been one of the greatest threats to our environment. In this important collection of original essays, the leading environmental scientists and social scientists examine the politics of air pollution policies and help us to understand the ways these policies have led to, idiosyncratic, effective, ineffective, and even disastrous choices about what we choose to put into and take out of the air. Offering historical, contemporary and cross-national perspectives, this volume provides a refreshing new approach to understanding how air pollution policies have evolved over time.DuPuis, E. Melanie is the author of 'Smoke and Mirrors The Politics and Culture of Air Pollution', published 2004 under ISBN 9780814719619 and ISBN 0814719619.