Ocean State Libraries

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was first published in three serialized excerpts in the New Yorker in June of 1962. The book appeared in September of that year and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson's passionate concern for the future of our planet reverberated powerfully throughout the world, and her eloquent book was instrumental...

As World War I raged across the globe, hundreds of young women toiled away at the radium-dial factories, where they painted clock faces with a mysterious new substance called radium. Assured by their bosses that the luminous material was safe, the women themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered from head to toe with the glowing dust. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" were considered the luckiest alive--until they began to fall mysteriously...

Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —The New York Observer
“The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times
“Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery...

A young man is shocked when he learns his aunts like to serve men elderberry wine with arsenic, and then bury their bodies in the cellar.

"A humorous and informative book that traces the role poisons have played in human history from antiquity to the present. Part history, part chemistry, part whodunit"--

There are over 80,000 synthetic chemicals in commerce today, including hormone-disrupting phthalates and air pollutants. Smith and Lourie prove how easily our bodies absorb these chemicals from the foods we eat, the air we breathe, and the products we smear on our skin-- day after day. Then they give us the good news about what is in our control and the steps we can take for reducing our toxic burden. The result is nothing short of a prescription...

With the narrative punch of Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action and the commitment to environmental truth-telling of Erin Brockovich, The Fluoride Deception documents a powerful connection between big corporations, the U.S. military, and the historic reassurances of fluoride safety provided by the nation's public health establishment. The Fluoride Deception reads like a thriller, but one supported by two hundred pages of source notes, years of investigative...