The first Earth Day is the most famous little-known event in modern American history. Because we still pay ritual homage to the planet every April 22, everyone knows something about Earth Day. Some people may also know that Earth Day 1970 made the environmental movement a major force in American political life. But, no one has told the whole story before.
The story of the first Earth Day is inspiring: it had a power, a freshness, and a seriousness of purpose that are difficult to imagine today. Earth Day 1970 created an entire green generation. Thousands of Earth Day organizers and participants decided to devote their lives to the environmental cause. Earth Day 1970 helped to build a lasting eco-infrastructure-lobbying organizations, environmental beats at newspapers, environmental-studies programs, ecology sections in bookstores, community ecology centers.
In The Genius of Earth Day, the prizewinning historian Adam Rome offers a compelling account of the rise of the environmental movement. Drawing on his experience as a journalist as well as his expertise as a scholar, he explains why the first Earth Day was so powerful, bringing one of the greatest political events of the twentieth century to life.
"Adam Rome's genial new book . . . brings to life another era. We're as distant from Earth Day as the Battle of Gettysburg was from James Monroe's reëlection, and Rome evokes a United States that feels, politically, like a foreign country . . . In Rome's view, the original Earth Day remains a model of effective political organizing."
Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker
"A fascinating treatment of both environmentalism and the structure of activism at the time."
Kirkus Reviews
"Rome's retelling of the hopeful origins of Earth Day and its early successes contain an important lesson for today. The social movements and anti-war crusades that swept through the country in the 1960s and '70s and the movement to promote respect for the natural world demonstrate the tremendous power of activism and grass-roots organizing."
