But in this final volume, he continues through the presidency of unlikely environmentalist Richard Nixon and the passage of the fully realized Endangered Species Act. Johnson’s signature of the Wilderness Act. “I consider Silent Spring Revolution to be a ‘hope machine,’” Brinkley writes, borrowing a term from folk singer Woody Guthrie, “reminding readers that our own times aren’t uniquely oppressive and that everyday people and nonprofit groups retain the capacity to fight for a green tomorrow in the United States and around the world.” His lesson is that people-by convincing a powerful and prominent few to roll up their sleeves, reach across the aisle, and act on their better angels-can effectively safeguard clean water, fresh air, and healthy green space.īrinkley had originally planned to end the story in 1964, with Rachel Carson’s death and Lyndon B. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, is an avowedly optimistic book. in the 1960s and early 1970s, Silent Spring Revolution: John F. His sweeping new history of environmentalism in the U.S. It is surprising then that Brinkley is sanguine about the accomplishments and future of the environmental movement. “This is the new normal,” Brinkley typed, “courtesy of our nation’s-indeed, the world’s, addiction to fossil fuels.” On television, he could see images of forest fires in Yosemite outside his window was the brutal 110-degree Texas heat. As he drafted his most recent book, the historian Douglas Brinkley lamented the signs around him. From colossal flooding in Pakistan to unprecedented heat waves in China, even to the rapid proliferation of spotted lanternflies across the United States, the consequences of a changing climate have come into terrifying focus in recent months. If you have glanced at the news-or stepped outside-in recent years, the ravages of climate change have been hard to ignore.
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