This is a book everyone needs to read.
They Poisoned the World is a book authored by Mariah Blake, an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in publications like The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and The New Republic. It follows a decades long battle to uncover and expose the dangers of forever chemicals – and how every day citizens rose up to fight against companies that produce them.
Although quite bleak, the content that Mariah Blake has put together weaves both her extensive research in with an engaging narrative. She paints a picture of not only the atrocities that DuPont, 3M, and other companies have committed in the name of profit, but also of the lives that were destructed.
With ~50 pages of references and over 700 interviews completed, Blake’s investigative work managed to accumulate an indisputable amount of evidence. The book focuses on both the small details and zooms out to show the broader picture. Although the acronyms can become a bit confusing, overall the writing was effective and reader-friendly.
When I was highlighting information that I found interesting, I realized that I could almost highlight the whole thing. There were many times I found myself scoffing out loud in disbelief.
It took me a while to be able to get through this book, simply because I found myself needing to take a break from facing what was a much more interesting topic than I realized from a surface level. It had grabbed my attention as not long ago, my hometown was on the brink of having a corporation move in and manufacture forever chemicals. This only renewed the anger that I felt back then.
I hope this book doesn’t get buried. The suffering people went through – and will continue to go through – is monumental and worldwide. Knowing that you’re full of chemicals and microplastics is one thing, but having irrefutable studies and facts is another.
The world we live in is difficult, and it doesn’t matter which political party with which you align because they are all complicit. Although progress is progress, taking decades for any meaningful action to take place has cost both quality of life and life itself and will continue to do so.
This book changed me and I highly recommend it.
Other nitpicking I found within the book that isn’t relevant for readers and simply for the ARC:
Page 123 – Dupont is missing capitalization in the second last paragraph.
Page 164 – At the end of the second last paragraph, there is an extra period in the middle of the sentence.
His tenure as mayor would be over in a few weeks. and he was determined to pass the deal while he could.
My Author/Reviewing Website | My BlueSky
(I received this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway.)
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JA Keuken 