Explore Booksellers suggests enviro, political and literary classics

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Explore Booksellers in Aspen recommends books on the environment, the political divide and James Faulkner’s enduring work on race relations.

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From the publisher: In 2014, after losing several friends and relatives to cancer, an unassuming insurance underwriter in Hoosick Falls, New York, began to suspect that the local water supply was polluted. When he tested his tap water, he discovered dangerous levels of forever chemicals. This set off a chain of events that led to 100 million Americans learning their drinking water was tainted. Although the discovery came as a shock to most, the U.S. government and the manufacturers of these toxic chemicals—used in everything from lipstick and cookware to children’s clothing—had known about their hazards for decades.

In “They Poisoned the World,” investigative journalist Mariah Blake tells the astonishing story of this cover-up, tracing its roots back to the Manhattan Project and through the postwar years, as industry scientists discovered that these chemicals refused to break down and were saturating the blood of virtually every human being. By the 1980s, manufacturers were secretly testing their workers and finding links to birth defects, cancer, and other serious diseases. At every step, the industry’s deceptions were aided by our government’s appallingly lax regulatory system—a system that has made us all guinea pigs in a vast, uncontrolled chemistry experiment.

From Clare Pearson, book buyer: This deep dive into the world of forever chemicals chronicles the history of their development, use, and the widespread and devastating consequences they pose to human health and the environment. Blake examines the responsibility of the corporations that developed these chemicals, as well as the regulatory failures that allowed them to wreak havoc for years, even when their danger was known. 

This broad and sweeping history comes to life through the stories of individuals and coalitions who came together to fight for clean drinking water and healthy communities. Both devastating and inspiring, I would recommend this book to anyone seeking to better understand the dangers of PFAS or who might need a reminder of the power of individuals to bring about meaningful social change. 

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From the publisher: When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to “Strangers in Their Own Land” to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic, “Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchild’s ‘strangers in their own land’ and a new elite.” Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called “humble and important” by David Brooks and “masterly” by Atul Gawande, Hochschild’s book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others.

From Jenny Douglass, staff: At a time when it feels that we are each stuck in our own political bubbles, this book from 2018 was so eye-opening that I couldn’t stop recommending it to all my friends. Written by a UC Berkeley sociology professor who goes to Louisiana to understand the people who support Tea Party politics, I really appreciated the empathy with which she portrayed the perspectives and worldviews of the folks she spoke with. This book made me want to reach out across the political divide more than ever to really understand why we all feel so separate from each other and figure out how we can work together to solve common problems.

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From the publisher: “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” —William Faulkner, on receiving the Nobel Prize

“Go Down, Moses” is composed of seven interrelated stories, all of them set in Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County. From a variety of perspectives, Faulkner examines the complex, changing relationships between blacks and whites, between man and nature, weaving a cohesive novel rich in implication and insight.

From Philip Psaledakis, bookseller: This is one of William Faulkner’s most engaging books to read. In it, he demonstrates the wide range of literary devices — from stream of consciousness to classic dialogic scenes — at his command. Faulkner considered “Go Down, Moses” a novel, but it is composed of seven short stories that each stand on their own. Attempting to read it as a unified whole and discovering the interrelation between the stories is a challenging task, yet what can be discovered is endless. 

The book is a bottomless pit of questions and surprises. In true Southern Gothic fashion, the novel is twisted, both psychologically and chronologically. Set in Faulkner’s fabled Yoknapatawpha County, it deals with relationships, especially relationships between races, between humanity and nature, between family members, and between the present and the past. It is a book worth rereading.

Type of Story: Review

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