For my final post of the year, I want to discuss some books in my backlog that I will (hopefully) get to during the holidays and the following year.
While in college, I became interested in environmental history which explores how people have defined the environment and how they have impacted it over time. One book that arguably launched the modern environmental movement and one I have been meaning to read for years is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Published in 1962, the book argues against the widespread use of pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), which was used to kill mosquitos. Throughout the book, Carson shows how the proliferation of these chemicals in the environment had unforeseen consequences from hurting bird populations (hence the title) to finding these chemicals in human breastmilk. The book became instrumental in banning the use of DDT and inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970.
Speaking of environmental history, another book I want to read is Eleonora Rohland’s Changes in the Air: Hurricanes in New Orleans from 1718 to the Present. Even though the book itself talks about modern hurricanes in addition to older storms, I am more interested in learning about the storms that formed and hit New Orleans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how people then dealt with them.
I also plan on continuing the Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. As I described in an earlier post, the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin as they serve aboard warships during the Napoleonic Wars is the selling point of the series. I am now on the second book Post Captain which devotes more time developing Aubrey and Maturin on land rather than out to sea.
Finally, I want to check out William E. Nelson’s E Pluribus Unum: How the Common Law Helped Unify and Liberate Colonial America, 1607-1776. For several years I have been researching the relationship between common law and its connection with early American republic policy. Specifically, I have been studying the Alien and Sedition Acts and how the political environment became toxic enough between the Federalists and Jeffersonians to necessitate the passage of legislation seemingly antithetical to constitutional principles. I hope Nelson’s analysis will provide more background information on common law and its influence on the colonies and, subsequently, the early American republic.
I am sure more books will be added to my reading list and/or backlog in the next several months. Reading priorities may shift based on what I find, but that is part of the fun with reading: you never know where it might lead.
It has been a fun year writing for SJR State’s Book Blog. Hopefully I will have a chance to continue contributing to the Book Blog in 2023. I hope everyone has a happy holiday season and a happy new year. Thank you for reading.
Silent Spring by