THE DAY THE RIVER CAUGHT FIRE

A testament to the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire, which helped to spark Earth Day and the environmental movement.

The fire itself was quickly doused and only a minor news story (the Cuyahoga, located in Cleveland, Ohio, having already, the author notes, caught fire 13 times since 1886), but thanks in part to crusading Detroit Mayor Carl Stokes—and, really, the times—it proved a tipping point in the history of environmental legislation and activism. In occasionally imprecise but vivid prose punctuated by incendiary KABOOMs, Wittenstein explains how the river became a “toxic soup of wood, metal, chemicals, oil, and even animal body parts” ripe for combustion, as were rivers in other industrial cities (“They were KABOOMING out of control!”). “People,” he writes, “finally opened their ears and eyes. They were tired of holding their noses.” But despite ending the main narrative with an optimistic observation that the river is clean enough today for fish to survive in it, he closes with an author’s note that offers a strong reminder that pollution and climate change remain deadly challenges: “This is not a movie. This is the world we have created.” Between views of prehistoric mastodons splashing in the unspoiled river and modern picnickers catching and cooking a fish (which is actually legal now), Hartland depicts racially diverse groups of firefighters, officials, marchers with signs in various languages, tourists in boats, and city dwellers in increasingly cleaned-up settings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A lively account of a watershed event.