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WORK TITLE: Pesticides, a Love Story
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BIRTHDATE:
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http://berks.psu.edu/person/mart-michelle
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LC control no.: n 2005031229
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2005031229
HEADING: Mart, Michelle, 1964-
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PERSONAL
Born August 19, 1964.
EDUCATION:ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Pennsylvania State University–Berks, head of the division of humanities, arts, and social sciences; associate professor of history.
AWARDS:Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society research fellowship, Munich, Germany, 2012.
WRITINGS
Article contributor to numerous periodicals, including America after Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment, German Association for American Studies, Left History, Studies in North American History, Politics, and Society, Tikkun, and Diplomatic History.
SIDELIGHTS
Michelle Mart is a writer and associate professor of history at Pennsylvania State University. Mart is also head of the division of humanities, arts, and social sciences at Penn State. Her research interests include post-World War II cultural history, U.S. foreign relations, environmental history, and American Jewish history. Mart teaches introductory courses on American history and the Vietnam War, food, the 1960s, and the Middle East. She also leads seminars on American foreign policy, environmental history, and the Cold War.
Mart received her B.A. from Cornell University, her M.A. from the University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. in history from New York University. She has written two books.
Eye on Israel
Mart’s Eye on Israel: How America Came to View the Jewish State as an Ally examines the period of time between Israel’s founding in 1948 and the beginning of the U.S.’s large-scale support of the country in the 1980’s. Primarily focused on the period between the late 40s through the late 50s, Eye on Israel looks as policy decisions as well as culture and ideas about Israel that existed in the U.S. during this time.
The first chapter of the book looks at the shift in attitude toward Jews that occurred in the U.S. following WWII. Following the horrors of the holocaust, Jews were suddenly culturally regarded with compassion, seen more as Americans rather than outsiders, as they had previously been viewed. This sentiment influenced some Americans to view of Israel as a country of people not so dissimilar from themselves. Mart provides the interesting example of Protestant churches expressing pro-Jewish sentiment. Compassion toward the Jewish experience of the holocaust also showed up in film and media.
However, antisemitism still permeated U.S. policy decisions regarding Israel. Politically, the U.S. displayed contradictory attitudes toward Israel, exhibiting openness to the state as a political ally, but not overtly expressing support of Israel as a Jewish state. As Middle Eastern countries began leaning toward the U.S.S.R. at the beginning of the cold war, Israel became a valuable ally in an otherwise increasingly adversarial geographical locale. Barry Rubin in the American Historical Review website noted: “Mart takes a broad and creative approach by focusing on the influence of culture and ideas in the process of what was a rather remarkable transformation.”
Pesticides, a Love Story
In Pesticides, a Love Story : America’s Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals, Mart looks at the history of pesticides in the U.S. As a cultural historian, Mart is interested in what influences popular perception about pesticides. She examines both the global and domestic responses to pesticide use.
Mart describes America’s relationship with pesticides as a love story, emphasizing that pesticide use has ingrained itself deeply into American culture. Pesticides have been used in agriculture, public health, warfare, household cleaning products, and small scale lawns and gardens. Mart examines American’s perceptions of pesticides and the media’s interpretation of scientific research and portrayal of the pros and dangers of pesticide use, rather than analyzing the scientific data itself.
A portion of the book is dedicated to an analysis of the significance of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the first book of its kind to denounce pesticides as destructive to the environment. Mart notes chemical company’s attempts to discredit Carson, and the ensuing counterattacks by environmental organizations. She discusses how this fight was a turning point in a shift in popular opinion about pesticides, strengthening the environmental movement. Mart explains that American’s love story with pesticides persists, and the chemicals are still used prolifically, despite rises and falls in popular opinion.
A contributor to Bookwatch wrote: Pesticides, a Love Story “presents real answers on the ongoing lure of the chemical solution and is an essential read for any who puzzle about the connections between pesticide use, special interests, and the American public’s malleable psyche.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Bookwatch, April, 2016, review of Pesticides, A Love Story: America’s Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals.
ONLINE
American Historical Review, https://academic.oup.com/ (August 8, 2017), Barry Rubin, review of Eye on Israel: How America Came to View the Jewish State as an Ally.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, https://networks.h-net.org/ (August 8, 2017), Frederick R. Davis, review of Pesticides, a Love Story.
Project Muse, https://muse.jhu.edu/ (August 8, 2017), Melani McAlister, review of Eye on Israel.*
Dr. Michelle Mart is an Associate Professor of History. Mart's research has specialized in recent American culture, the environment, and foreign policy. Dr. Mart has just finished a cultural history of pesticide use in the United States from World War II to the present: Pesticides, A Love Story. Her first book, Eye on Israel, examined relations between the United States and Israel in the post-World War II period, and cultural images of Jews and the Jewish state. Currently, Dr. Mart is working on a book-length study of the intersection of food, politics, and culture. Mart teaches the introductory survey of American history, as well as introductory courses on the Vietnam War, food, the 1960s, and the Middle East. Her upper level classes include seminars on American Foreign Policy, environmental history, and the Cold War.
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bug sprayer from old seed catalog
Our relationship with synthetic pesticides is complicated, says Penn State Berks historian Michelle Mart. We are concerned about the dangers they pose to human and environmental health, but we also value them as effective tools against organisms that carry disease and threaten agricultural crops.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/public domain
Pesticides, a love story
New book explores our complex relationship with environmental chemicals
By Lisa Baldi
November 17, 2015
We just can’t seem to quit bug-killing chemicals.
Michelle Mart, an historian at Penn State Berks, investigates why Americans cling to their love of pesticides despite warnings, rising costs, and declining effectiveness in her recently published book, Pesticides, A Love Story: America's Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals (University Press of Kansas, 2015).
The book grew out of a research fellowship Mart was awarded by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) in Munich, Germany, in 2012 to explore the cultural history of pesticide use in the United States from 1945 to the present. She examined popular and political attitudes, synthesizing scholarly work on familiar turning points in the history of pesticides, and juxtaposing those with contemporary media discussions.
According to Mart, America’s love affair with synthetic pesticides started with the use of DDT during World War II to kill the organisms that carry typhus (lice and ticks) and malaria (mosquitoes). After the war, the transition to domestic use in the United States was almost immediate.
In a blog post she wrote for the RCC, Mart explains how the adoption of DDT use fit with larger trends in the U.S. at the time. “This was a period of a great increase in per capita wealth, and rising expectations about quality of life and material comforts. There were also changing aesthetics to do with suburbanization, which accentuated the idea of possessing and shaping your very own part of nature. Pesticides could help people to do this.
“Of course DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons were increasingly widespread in agriculture, not just suburban homes. They seemed to work miracles. Production was way up and the direct costs of food production were way down.”
In the 1950s, many citizens began to question the health and environmental effects of synthetic pesticides, and when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in 1962, it received enormous attention and became a bestseller. After intense public debate, the use of DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972.
“I would argue that the commitment to an industrial, agricultural order and chemical interference in the environment is no less strong.”
Mart explains that much of the discussion about pesticides was focused on DDT and did not question the modern agricultural system as a whole or the general question of chemical use in the environment. Meanwhile, herbicides—most commonly Agent Orange—were used as chemical weapons in Vietnam to defoliate the jungle and destroy crops that supposedly fed enemy fighters. There were few criticisms of this policy at the time. When the policy was mentioned in the press before 1968, the media often repeated the military justification that Agent Orange was a strategic tool.
“Towards the end of the war and after it was over, there was much more controversy in American politics over Agent Orange, most especially its impact on American veterans, not on the Vietnamese or their environment, nor on the use of chemicals in agriculture more generally,” explains Mart.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, new laws were passed in the United States, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act, and the regulation of pesticides was changed with the establishment of the EPA. These laws and regulations were met with resistance from business groups, which argued that the government measures were unnecessary and economically harmful. At the same time, American-made pesticides and herbicides continued to be marketed overseas.
“All the while that the issues were debated in the United States, American chemical manufacturers, agricultural companies, and the U.S. government promoted the export of chemical agriculture in the Green Revolution,” says Mart.
She goes on to explain that beginning in 1990, there were contradictory developments in attitudes toward pesticides. While some Americans celebrated the ban on DDT and other persistent chlorinated hydrocarbons here and abroad, others blamed this policy for a resurgence in malaria, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, and the millions of deaths that resulted. Since then, environmental regulations have continued to elicit both strong support and criticism.
“The discourse about pesticides today is more sophisticated and complex than it was in 1950,” asserts Mart. “But I would argue that the commitment to an industrial, agricultural order and chemical interference in the environment is no less strong. There has not been a paradigm shift about pesticides or the environment, even if environmental historians and activists would like to think otherwise. In essence, there is no indication that most Americans have given up three bedrock assumptions of their cultural outlook: Modern human society has some ability to manipulate or control the environment; short-term interests are more important than long-term ones; environmental decisions must be made on the basis of clear evidence, not out of precaution.”
Mart's research on cultural history has appeared in a number of journal articles and book chapters. Her first book, Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally, examined American culture and U.S.-Israeli relations since the Jewish state’s founding in 1948.
About Mart
Michelle Mart is an associate professor of history at Penn State, Berks Campus, in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA. She is also Acting Head of the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
Mart’s role in Deadly Dreams is the subproject “Going Back to Paradise? Embracing or Rejecting Nature in the Backyard?”
Mart writes about the intersections of cultural and environmental history, especially regarding pesticides and how we produce our food. She is the author of Pesticides, A Love Story: America’s Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals (Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas, 2015) which examined the remarkable cultural and political continuity in American attitudes toward synthetic pesticides, from World War II to the present day. The book explains the roots of these generally positive views, even in the face of serious health and environmental consequences from pesticide use. Love is not rational, nor are American attitudes toward pesticides. She is currently working on a project focusing in particular on the relationship between food, culture, and the environment.
Mart’s first book, Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally (Albany: SUNY, 2006), investigated the intersections between cultural images of Israel and Jews and the foreign policy of the United States.
A sample of Mart’s other publications include: “Pesticides and the Transformation of National Audubon Society,” in America after Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment, German Association for American Studies, forthcoming; “U.S.-Israeli Relations and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East,” in Robert McMahon and Thomas Zeiler (eds.). A Guide to U.S. Foreign Policy: A Diplomatic History. Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2012; and “Rhetoric and Response: The Cultural Impact of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” Left History, 14.2, Summer 2010.
MICHELLE MART
The Pennsylvania State University, Berks Campus (610) 396-6180
P.O. Box 7009 E-mail: mam20@psu.edu Reading PA 19610
EDUCATION:
Ph.D. in History, New York University, New York NY, September 1993. Dissertation title: “Pioneers, Prophets, and Pragmatists: American Images of Israel and Jews, 1947-1960.” Advisor: Marilyn Young. Thesis committee: David Reimers and Thomas Bender.
M.A. in History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, August 1988. Major field: post-World War II American and Soviet Studies. Advisor: Bradford Perkins.
B.A. as a College Scholar specializing in American and Soviet Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, June 1986; graduated Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with Distinction in All Subjects, and various honors. Advisor: Walter LaFeber.
College Preparatory and Regents Diplomas, Hunter College High School, New York NY, June 1982, with various honors.
MAJOR FIELDS OF INTEREST:
Post-World War II Cultural History; U.S. Foreign Relations; Environmental History; American Jewish History.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
Associate Professor, The Pennsylvania State University, Berks campus, Reading PA, July 2003- present.
Assistant Professor, The Pennsylvania State University, Berks-Lehigh Valley College/Berks campus, Reading PA, August 1995-June 2003.
Lecturer, Tufts University, Medford MA, 1993-1995. Instructor, Regis College, Weston MA, Spring 1992. Instructor, New York University, Summer 1991. Instructor, University of Michigan, Winter 1987.
BOOKS:
Pesticides, A Love Story, in progress and under contract with University Press of Kansas.
Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally, State University of New York Press, 2006,
2007.
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS:
“U.S.-Israeli Relations and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East,” in Robert McMahon and Thomas Zeiler (Eds.), A Guide to US Foreign Policy: A Diplomatic History Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, in press.
“Cultural and Political Images of American Jews in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” Studies in North American History, Politics, and Society, 29, 2011, 82-105.
“The Cultural Foundations of the U.S./Israel Alliance,” Tikkun magazine, www.tikkun.org, November 2006.
“Eleanor Roosevelt, Liberalism, and Israel,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Spring 2006.
“The Christianization of Israel and Jews in 1950s America,” Religion and American Culture, Winter 2004.
“Acceptance and Assimilation: Jews in 1950s American Popular Culture,” Michael Berkowitz, Susan Tannanbaum, and Sam Bloom (eds.). Forging Modern Jewish Identities: Public Faces and Private Struggles. London: Vallentine-Mitchell, 2003.
“Eleanor Roosevelt and Israel,” Maurine Beasley and Holly Shulman (eds.). The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.
“Constructing a Universal Ideal: Antisemitism, American Jews, and the Founding of Israel,” Modern Judaism, May 2000.
“Popular Culture, Gender, and America’s Special Relationship with Israel”/”The Special U.S.-Israeli Relationship: Cultural Affinity and Cold War Alignment,” Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson (eds.). Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol. II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, 2010.
“Constructing Parallel Identities: American Jews and Israel in Popular and Political Culture”
published on CD-rom: Frank Brinkhuis & Sascha Talmor (eds.). Memory, History and Critique. European Identity at the Millennium. Proceedings of the 6th International ISSEI Conference at the University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands, August 1996. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.
“Tough Guys and American Cold War Policy: Images of Israel, 1948-1960,” in Diplomatic History, Summer 1996.
BOOK REVIEWS
Matthew Jacobs, Imagining the Middle East: The Building of an American Foreign Policy, 1918-1967, on H-Diplo, 2011.
Richard Immerman, Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz, on H-Soz-u-Kult, 2011.
Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East, on H-Diplo roundtable, April 2009.
Michael Thomas, American Policy Toward Israel: The Power and the Limits of Belief in The Middle East Journal, Spring 2008.
Abraham Ben-Zvi, The Origins of the American-Israeli Alliance: The Jordanian Factor in The Middle East Journal, Autumn 2007.
Elizabeth Stephens, US Policy Toward Israel: The Role of Political Culture in Defining the ‘Special’ Relationship in International History Review, June 2007.
Naomi Cohen, The Americanization of Zionism in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Winter 2004.
Robert Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy in Pacific Historical Review, August 2003.
Egal Feldman, Catholics and Jews in Twentieth-Century America in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Summer 2002.
Isaac Alteras, Eisenhower and Israel in American Jewish History, March 1995.
REFEREE
Diplomatic History
European Journal of American Studies Bullfrog Films
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers The Teaching Company
PRESENTATIONS AND LECTURES:
American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Boston MA, January 2011, “Public Reception of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring,” and roundtable participant and presenter, “Uses of the Foreign Relations of the United States.”
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Madison WS, June 2010. Comments on one panel on environmentalism and American foreign policy, and chaired another panel on ethnicity and American foreign policy.
American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Portland OR, March 2010, “The Underside of the Agricultural Revolution.”
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Falls Church VA, June 2009, “Articles of Omission: Agent Orange in the Popular and Political Culture of the 1960s.”
American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Tallahassee FL, March 2009, “American Public Reaction to Agent Orange Use in Vietnam.”
Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Meeting, Bethlehem PA, October 2008, commentator for “Pennsylvania and Its Environment.”
Universität Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany, May 2008, “Foundations of the American-Israeli Relationship.” Invited lecture.
Ninth Krefeld Historical Symposia on Religion and Politics, Krefeld, Germany, May 2008, “Images of Israel after World War II.” Invited participant.
International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Granada, Spain, July 2007, “The Audubon Society and Pesticide Use in the United States.” (Paper proposal submitted and accepted; presentation cancelled due to family illness.)
American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Baton Rouge LA, February 2007, “National Audubon Responds to Pesticide Use.”
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Lawrence KS, June 2006, “Eleanor Roosevelt’s Embrace of Israel.”
Nature and Environmental Writers—College and University Educators Conference and Workshop, Boothbay Harbor ME, June 2006, “A Reconsideration of Silent Spring."
Agricultural History Society Annual Meeting, Boston MA, June 2006, “The Transformation of Agricultural Societies After World War II.”
American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, St. Paul MN, March 2006, “Transforming the Agricultural Landscape: Visions of Industrial Bounty.”
American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Houston, TX, March 2005, “The Impact of Silent Spring in American Popular Culture.”
Revisiting the Cold War, Center for the Cold War Conference, University of Santa Barbara, CA, May 2003, commentator on “Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and the Iranian Revolution.”
Culture and International History II, Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany, December 2002, “Eleanor Roosevelt, Liberalism, and Israel.”
Society for the Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Athens, GA, June 2002, “11 September in Context: Arabs and Israelis in Postwar American Cultural Narratives,” and commentator on panel, “Ideology in the Early Cold War.”
Northeast Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Meeting, New Haven CT, November 2001, “God, War, and Romance: Biblical Fiction in the 1950s.”
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada, June 2000, “Americans Look at Israel in the 1960s.”
Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, St. Louis MO, March 2000, “Liberals, Conservatives, and Israel: Shifting American Support in the 1960s.”
American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC, January 1999, “Religious Revival and Approaches to Israel in the Eisenhower Years.”
American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, San Diego CA, August 1998, “Ideology, Foreign Policy, and American Jews in the Early Cold War.”
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Washington DC, June 1998, “Religious Revival and Images of Israel in the Eisenhower Years.”
Western Jewish Studies Association Annual Meeting, Tucson AZ, April 1997, “Imagining a Masculine Israel in the Cold War.”
International Society for the Study of European Ideas Conference, Utrecht, The Netherlands, August 1996, “Comparing Identities: American Jews and Israel in the Cold War” as part of the workshop “Constructing Modern Jewish Identities in Comparative Perspective.”
Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Chicago IL, March 1996, “Constructing Parallel Identities: Americans, Jews, and Israelis.”
Conference on Christian-Jewish Relations and the Holocaust, Jerusalem, Israel, December 1995, “Christians, Jews, and Israel in American Postwar Culture.”
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, Waltham MA, June 1994, “The Twentieth Century David and Goliath: Images of Israel in Postwar American Foreign Policy.”
Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Atlanta GA, April 1994. Organized panel: “Gendered Foreign Policy Discourse of the Cold War.” Individual paper: “Tough Guys, and American Cold War Policy: Images of Israel, 1948-1960.”
New England American Studies Association Conference, Waltham MA, May 1993, “Images of Israel in Popular Discourse.”
National Council on Public History Conference, Valley Forge PA, April 1993, “McCarthyism Comes to the University.”
Dusquesne University History Forum, Pittsburgh PA, October 1992. Organized panel: “Cultural Ideology and Recent American Foreign Relations.” Individual paper: “American Fictional Images of the Holocaust and Modern Israel, 1949-1955.”
History of Education Society Conference, Kansas City MO, October 1991, “Radicalism in Academia.” COURSES TAUGHT:
American Environmental History, upper level; American Foreign Policy Since 1914, upper level; The Sixties; Hollywood Goes to War, first year seminar; Surveys of American history, settlement to the present; Recent American History, upper level seminar; Culture and Politics in Cold War America; Introduction to the Middle East, regular course and honors course; Postwar U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East; First year research seminar; African American History survey; Technology and Society in American History, regular course and first year seminar; America and the Third World; History Writing Colloquium on Revolutionary Elites.
SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION AND THE UNIVERSITY:
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations: Holt Dissertation/Hogan Fellowship Committee, 2001-2004; 2003-2004, committee chair; Grants and Fellowship Committee, 2009-present; member Bernath Lecture Committee, 2010-present, chair 2012-2013.
Truman Library Institute: Member of the Committee on Research Scholarship and Academic Relations, and the Grants Subcommittee and Book Prize Subcommittee, 2001-present.
American Jewish Historical Society Academic Council, member, 2008-present.
The Pennsylvania State University, (1995-present): Co-Coordinator, American Studies; Strategic Planning Council (twice); College and campus senates (chair, 2003-4, chair-elect, 2002-2003); Faculty Affairs Committee (chair, 2001-2002); Ad-Hoc Senate and Administrative E-Learning Committee; Committee on Rules, Elections and Committees; Divisional and campus curriculum committees; Faculty evaluation and development task force; Peer reviewer; Faculty work load task force; Chair, history, art history, and communication search committees; Librarian search committee; Division head search committee; Community Service Committee; Liberal Arts Council of Senators (university-wide); Organized series of brown bag history presentations; Numerous peer reviews.
GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS:
The Pennsylvania State University, 1995-present: Sabbatical for Research, 2005-2006; Roy C. Buck Fund grant of the College of Liberal Arts; Project Empower grant of the Commonwealth
Education System; Research Development Grants of the Commonwealth Education System, the Berks-Lehigh Valley College, and the Berks campus; Berks Campus Faculty Development Fund grants; Global Fund grants; Berks Lehigh Valley College FIRST grants.
New York University, 1988-1993: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Three Year Fellowship, Penfield Fellowships, University Fellowships, Anonymous Grant.
University of Michigan, 1986-1988: History Department, American Culture Department, and English Composition Board Teaching Fellowships.
Pesticides, A Love Story
The Bookwatch.
(Apr. 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
Full Text:
Pesticides, A Love Story
Michelle Mart
University Press of Kansas
2501 West 15th Street, Lawrence, KS 66049
www.kansaspress.ku.edu
9780700621286 $34.95 www.amazon.com
Those who were active in the 1960s well know the dangers of pesticides and the warning message in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring; but it seems
this message, though acknowledged at the time, has long been lost as pesticide use in America has actually soared in recent decades. Why has this
happened? Pesticides, a Love Story seeks out the answer as it considers the bigger pictures of American beliefs in progress and chemical
solutions to common problems. Chapters trace the evolution of this belief system with an eye to showing how chemical pesticides became an
intrinsic part of American culture, and details how acceptance of their risks and dangers overruled cautions. Chapters tackle how this kind of
acceptance was fostered by the pesticide industry, and how economic and social pressures have led to hazardous conditions. More than another
'warning' book and more than an analysis of agricultural choices, Pesticides, a Love Story presents real answers on the ongoing lure of the
chemical solution and is an essential read for any who puzzle about the connections between pesticide use, special interests, and the American
public's malleable psyche.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
7/8/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499562804447 2/2
"Pesticides, A Love Story." The Bookwatch, Apr. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453290063&it=r&asid=5e3d857674cfd0a9a4bd8606d0230281. Accessed 8 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A453290063
MICHELLE MART. Eye on Israel: How America Came to View the Jewish State as an Ally. Albany: State University of New York Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 242. $65.00
Michelle Mart . Eye on Israel: How America Came to View the Jewish State as an Ally . Albany: State University of New York Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 242. $65.00.
Barry Rubin
Am Hist Rev (2009) 114 (1): 181-182. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.1.181
Published: 01 February 2009
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U.S. political and military support for Israel is largely taken for granted today. Large-scale support, however, although extremely important in terms of recognition at the time of Israel's founding in 1948, really only began in the 1980s. That is why Michelle Mart's book, which looks at the often-neglected middle period, is of such interest.
Mart takes a broad and creative approach by focusing on the influence of culture and ideas in the process of what was a rather remarkable transformation. After all, during World War II, antisemitic ideas in the State Department had limited Jewish immigration during the Nazi era, thereby making inevitable the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Hostility to Israel's creation continued within the government bureaucracy well into the decision-making process of 1948, while policy in the 1950s could be described at best as evenhanded.
To explain how so much changed regarding this issue, the author's presentation is organized in six chapters. The first chapter is entitled “The Image of the ‘New Jew’ in Postwar Culture,” though I would suggest a better way to put it would be the new image of the Jew in postwar culture. In the face of social trends at home and reactions against antisemitism—whose consequences were viewed by American soldiers and journalists in the Nazi concentration camps—attitudes toward Jews shifted within the United States. In the author's words, a “transformation of Jews from outsiders to insiders” (p. 22) occurred, though I would add that it was only from being a relatively unpopular to a relatively popular group.
Chapter two, “The United States and the Founding of Israel,” adds nothing to the story on the policymaking front but provides new material on the public debate. There are two problems here. First, by focusing on the immediate developments the book does not deal with longer-term themes, such as historic Christian images of the Holy Land. Second, the text understates questions about sympathy for Israel based on the socialist leadership and democratic structures of the pre-state movement, instead putting its emphasis on images arising from the war.
“Views of the New Jewish State,” chapter three, discusses the early image of Israel within cultural circles, a sympathy that stood in contrast to very limited “American political commitments” (p. 84). While there are no surprises here, the examples provided are interesting and often hitherto obscure ones.
A more original perspective is provided in chapter four, “The 1950s Religious Revival and ‘Christianizing’ the Image of Israel and Jews.” The argument regards the development of pro-Jewish sentiment in Protestant churches, something best expressed in the subtitle “From Christianity to Judeo-Christianity” (p. 86). While this is extremely interesting, it should also be noted that the detachment of cultural and intellectual history from political-strategic factors can be misleading. For example, while religious factors might have led to a more positive feeling toward Israel, the main issue was the siding of Egypt and other Arab states with the USSR in the Cold War, not to mention the increasing radicalism and anti-Americanism expressed by them well in advance of any increase in U.S.-Israel relations.
If “numerous policymakers” and cultural figures “saw Israelis as religious brothers,” after all, the alliance only developed after the country became a major asset following Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War and its role in preventing a Syrian-PLO conquest of Jordan in 1970. Indeed, this is foreshadowed most importantly by an obscure but extraordinarily important State Department memorandum of April 1, 1956, which expressed concern over the effort by President Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt to overthrow more moderate Middle Eastern regimes friendly to the United States. And even after attempts to conciliate the radical Arab nationalists failed, it still took more than a decade for a pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy to develop.
Chapter five discusses “Jews in 1950s American Culture and Politics.” A growing assertiveness and openness contrasted sharply with the fear and hesitation of the prewar period characterized so memorably by Ben Hecht. It was a two-way process, also involving an increased acceptance of Jews by the larger Christian society.
Finally, chapter six, “The Cold War, Suez, and Beyond,” analyzes U.S. policy in the 1956 Suez crisis, albeit mainly regarding Israel's relations with American Jews. “Despite American displeasure at Israeli actions during the Suez crisis, with their military victory over Nasser and their partnership with the British and the French, the Israelis had demonstrated their membership in an alliance of Western nations that opposed the danger and disorder of radical nationalism, revolution, and, by extension, the Soviet Union. In the late 1950s, Israelis appeared as more natural (and military adept) potential Cold War partners than did their Arab adversaries.”
While generally accurate, the last sentence overstates the case regarding policy makers' perceptions. The main emphasis was still on trying to mobilize support from the remaining non-military regimes in the Arab world. In a real sense, the American policy shift was quite slow and a reluctant one on the part of the State Department bureaucracy. It was eventually brought about by elected and appointed policy makers with a wider strategic vision who were not State Department officials.
Mart's book takes the emphasis away from pro-Israel lobbying efforts, which were minimal even into the 1980s, and places it on evolving attitudes within the political, intellectual, and cultural elite. In so doing it adds to the literature and provides a number of enlightening examples and quotes. Read as a cultural-intellectual—and less as a political-strategic—study of evolving attitudes toward Jews in postwar America, this book supplements our understanding of what emerged as a central issue of U.S. foreign policy in later years.
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Davis on Mart, 'Pesticides, a Love Story: America's Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals'
Author:
Michelle Mart
Reviewer:
Frederick R. Davis
Michelle Mart. Pesticides, a Love Story: America's Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015. 344 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7006-2128-6.
Reviewed by Frederick R. Davis (Florida State University)
Published on H-Environment (June, 2016)
Commissioned by David T. Benac
To write the history of pesticides, historians face a dizzying array of choices. First, despite the definite article in the previous sentence, we must decide which pesticides will serve as the subject. Leading up to World War II and since, agricultural chemists developed hundreds of chemical insecticides and thousands of formulas. We must also decide which group of actors will serve as the focus: agricultural chemists, farmers (or farmworkers), public health officials, chemical corporations, government agencies such as the FDA or the USDA or the EPA, toxicologists, consumers, NGOs, wildlife, and so on. The story (stories) of pesticides are complicated by scientific complexity and scientific uncertainty. How government legislators and regulators have negotiated such complexities and uncertainties adds yet another layer to the stories. Teasing out these stories requires sifting through many thousands of pages of testimony, especially to understand environmental risk after World War II. Popular perception filters all the elements of the history of pesticides. Never has the expression, “Well, it’s complicated” launched more attempts to explain such a critical element in environmental history.
With Pesticides, A Love Story: America's Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals, Michelle Mart explores the ongoing significance of pesticides to Americans. Frankly, she had me at “Love Story.” Americans used pesticides extensively in agriculture, public health (think mosquito control in the fight against malaria and other arboviruses), war, and even gardens and lawns, not to mention household applications in the never-ending quest to fight pest insects of a spectacular diversity. But is that love? Yes, Mart argues convincingly, and she frames each chapter with a catchy reference to the relationship status. Thus, “Foreign Affairs” captures the role of pesticides in the Green Revolution and the deployment of herbicides in Vietnam, and “Love is Blind” suggests ongoing commitment to pesticides despite horrific disasters at home and in Bhopal, to name one. You get the idea. Even if the device is a bit too clever, it worked for me, and I strongly suspect my students will feel the same way. Thinking back on the significant claims of Pesticides: A Love Story, Mart’s chapter framing sticks in my brain, ready for recall. Time to test it on students.
As a cultural historian, Mart is chiefly interested in popular perception. How did Americans understand pesticides as well as benefits (and ultimately risks)? How did the media interpret science and regulation of chemical pesticides? By focusing on media accounts, Mart avoids several deep wells of endlessly reducible complexity (technical scientific details and legislative hearings are two). Occam would love the opportunity to parse the details ever more finely, razor in hand, but readers struggle to sift through exposures at parts per million and expressions of toxicity as LD50s. In the final analysis, Pesticides, a Love Story reveals how the media, including scientists who wrote for the public, interpreted the science and regulation of risk as it related to pesticides. Thus, in analyzing the significance of the publication of Silent Spring (1962), she emphasizes the reaction of chemical companies and their efforts to discredit Rachel Carson. Offsetting such attacks were equal, perhaps greater, attempts to defend Carson’s claims. Of course, the ensuing environmental movement and the DDT ban in 1972 vindicated Carson.
Beyond its accessibility to a broad spectrum of readers (pun intended), Pesticides, a Love Story offers an impressive breadth of coverage, with sections devoted to the assessment of herbicides, Integrated Pest Management, endocrine disrupters, organic foods, and GMOs, all in addition to the familiar topics like the role of DDT in controlling malaria during WWII. Such breadth of coverage would usually come at the cost of depth, but Mart’s thoughtful analysis gives readers much to contemplate.
Pesticides, a Love Story provides one of the clearest distillations of popular perceptions of pesticides and their impact on health and the environment to date. Michelle Mart arranges wide-ranging coverage of pesticides (domestically and abroad), risks posed to people and wildlife, and potential alternatives, all under a provocative thesis. Given the ongoing commitment in American agriculture to pesticides in the face of threats to environmental and human health, love may well be the best explanation; it certainly functions effectively in this important new book.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=45864
Citation: Frederick R. Davis. Review of Mart, Michelle, Pesticides, a Love Story: America's Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. June, 2016.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=45864
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally (review)
Melani McAlister
From: American Jewish History
Volume 93, Number 4, December 2007
pp. 497-500 | 10.1353/ajh.0.0036
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Reviewed by
Melani McAlister (bio)
Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally. By Michelle Mart. Albany: State University of New York, 2006. xiv + 242 pp.
Michelle Mart's Eye on Israel is an intelligent and historically grounded study of the image of Israel in the United States from the mid-1940s to the late 1950s. Deftly using sources that range from State Department documents to popular film, Mart examines the cultural and social attitudes that played a role in shaping U.S. political and diplomatic relationships with the new state. The focus is on the first ten years after World War II, starting with U.S. debates over Israel's founding and ending just after the Suez Crisis in 1956. With her careful attention to this relatively neglected decade, Mart questions the common assumption that the U.S. embrace of Israel was inevitable—that it emerged easily and clearly from shared values, or was forged directly from the ashes of the Holocaust. Instead, she takes seriously the problems that Israel's founding posed for American policymakers, whose interests in the Middle East were complex and at times contradictory. This important study combines cultural and political history to explore the terrain that both policymakers and the public navigated in their path toward the "special relationship."
One of the strengths of Mart's book is that she traces the multiple intersections between attitudes about Jews in the United States and attitudes toward Israel. She does not imagine a one-way relationship, but instead suggests the importance of an ongoing set of questions about Jewish identity, U.S. national self-definition, and the relationship between the two. Mart argues that from the mid-1940s until 1953, U.S. political and cultural attitudes toward Israel were "increasingly friendly, but also complex and not always easy to read" (30). In particular, Americans expressed a profound ambivalence about the particular nature of Israel as a Jewish nation, which seemed at once to be a fulfillment of (justified) [End Page 497] universal rights and an expression of (unjustified) particularism. The problem was particularly acute for Americans, in part because of the specific ways in which postwar U.S. culture came to understand the nature of antisemitism.
As World War II came to an end, issues of race and democracy were paramount concerns for many Americans. In the wake of the Holocaust, with the emerging power of anticolonial movements, and facing the dawn of an American Century built on the color line, liberals and conservatives alike touted the importance of embracing "universal" rights for all people.1 Race talk became an embarrassment. In this context, a spate of novels and films took up the problem of antisemitism in America. Mart convincingly traces the "de-semitizing aesthetic" (15) in these popular culture texts, which demanded that Jews who were accepted into the mainstream should look more and more "Aryan." In perhaps the best known example, Gentleman's Agreement (the 1947 novel and then film), the writer Phil Green decides to pose as Jewish for six weeks. He quickly learns the pervasiveness and corrosive impact of anti-Jewish attitudes. The film and the book both make clear that such prejudice is "un-American"; it is, Phil says, opposed to "everything this country stands for" (7). But for Phil Green, posing as Jewish does not require any real changes on his part: he does not need any particular cultural knowledge or religious values to "become" Jewish. Nor he does not have to "blacken up," as John Howard Griffith would fifteen years later in Black Like Me (1961). This universalizing and assimilationist logic implied that Jewishness had little content. Antisemitism was not only irrational, it had no real referent: prejudice is wrong because, after all, we are all the same.
But in the 1940s and 50s, Jewishness was also understood as something more than decorative difference. Policymakers and popular culture both defined Jews as unique because of their victimization in the Holocaust. John Hersey's The Wall (1950), for example, told the distinctively Jewish story of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. And Hersey's novel posits that Jewish identity is a precious inheritance. One rabbi tells a main...