Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-248) and index.

DDT and the American century -- An island in a sea of disease : DDT enters a global war -- Disease, DDT, and development : the American century in Italy -- Science in the service of agriculture : DDT and the beginning of the green revolution in Mexico -- The age of wreckers and exterminators : eradication in the postwar world -- Green revolutions in conflict : debating Silent spring, food, and science during the Cold War -- It's all or nothing : debating DDT and development under the law -- One man's pesticide is another man's poison : the controversy continues -- Rethinking DDT in a global age.

In DDT and the American Century, David Kinkela chronicles the use of DDT around the world from 1941 to the present with a particular focus on the United States, which has played a critical role in encouraging the global use of the pesticide. The banning of DDT in the United States in 1972 is generally regarded as a signal triumph for the American environmental movement. Yet DDT's function as a tool of U.S. foreign policy and its use in international development projects designed to solve problems of disease and famine made it an integral component of the so-called American Century.--[book cover]