Home › Books › After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the …
After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort
by
46/99
Critics
32/99
Readers
n/a
Scholars
41/99
Rating
52/99
Volume
53/99
Rating
12/99
Volume
—
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
This "ambitious [and] delightful" (The New York Times) work of literary nonfiction interweaves the science and history of the powerful refrigerant (and dangerous greenhouse gas) Freon with a haunting meditation on how to live meaningfully and morally in a rapidly heating world.In After Cooling, Eric Dean Wilson braids together air-conditioning history, climate science, road trips, and philosophy to tell the story of the birth, life, and afterlife of Freon, the refrigerant that ripped a hole larger than the continental United States in the ozone layer. As he traces the refrigerant's life span from its invention in the 1920s—when it was hailed as a miracle of scientific progress—to efforts in the 1980s to ban the chemical (and the resulting political backlash), Wilson finds himself on a journey through the American heartland, trailing a man who buys up old tanks of Freon stockpiled in attics and basements to destroy what remains of the chemical before it can do further harm. Wilson is at heart an essayist, looking far and wide to tease out what particular forces in American culture—in capitalism, in systemic racism, in our values—combined to lead us into the Freon crisis and then out. "Meticulously researched and engagingly written" (Amitav Ghosh), this "knockout debut" (New York Journal of Books) offers a rare glimpse of environmental hope, suggesting that maybe the vast and terrifying problem of global warming is not beyond our grasp to face.
Preview
Reviews
"Well-written, unexpectedly engaging, and perhaps a bit overlong, After Cooling is a knockout debut by a gifted writer."
"The sheer volume of ideas and narrative strands in this book can be overwhelming at times."
"My main quibble with After Cooling is that the book seems at times to apologize for its very existence ..."
"a tour de force on the steep costs of living in a world that prioritizes personal comfort ..."
"Although that's an ongoing theme, the author has not written a polemic but rather a philosophical attack on the free market and capitalism, which drive our obsession with personal comfort ..."
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!