ePub Memories and Records: the Lord FIsher Omnibus by Baron Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher in History

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • Winner of The New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award A new classic of science reporting.”—The New York Times The true story of a small town ravaged by industrial pollution; Toms River won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and has been hailed by The New York Times as "a new classic of science reporting." Now available in paperback with a new afterword by acclaimed author Dan Fagin; the book masterfully blends hard-hitting investigative journalism; scientific discovery; and unforgettable characters. One of New Jersey’s seemingly innumerable quiet seaside towns; Toms River became the unlikely setting for a decades-long drama that culminated in 2001 with one of the largest environmental legal settlements in history. For years; large chemical companies had been using Toms River as their private dumping ground; burying tens of thousands of leaky drums in open pits and discharging billions of gallons of acid-laced wastewater into the town’s namesake river. The result was a notorious cluster of childhood cancers scientifically linked to local air and water pollution. Fagin recounts the sixty-year saga of rampant pollution and inadequate oversight that made Toms River a cautionary tale. He brings to life the pioneering scientists and physicians who first identified pollutants as a cause of cancer and the everyday people in Toms River who struggled for justice: a young boy whose cherubic smile belied the fast-growing tumors that had decimated his body from birth; a nurse who fought to bring the alarming incidence of childhood cancers to the attention of authorities who didn’t want to listen; and a mother whose love for her stricken child transformed her into a tenacious advocate for change. Rooted in a centuries-old scientific quest; Toms River is an epic of dumpers at midnight and deceptions in broad daylight; of corporate avarice and government neglect; and of a few brave individuals who refused to keep silent until the truth was exposed.