Anniston, Ala., where decades of PCB contamination from a Monsanto chemical plant led to a massive lawsuit and a $700 million settlement—twice the celebrated "Erin Brockovich" payout—is also where journalist Love grew up. Love's retelling of this toxic tort saga—and an unrelated battle between environmentalists and the Pentagon over a plan to incinerate chemical weapons at a local army depot—also tries to outdo the movie Erin Brockovich
in drama, flamboyant characterizations and feisty populism. Almost every participant in the tussle gets an overdrawn profile—"David Baker was back, baby"—and almost every development gets ominously foreshadowed ("there was something out there on the edge of town that had scared these Monsanto folks half to death"). Thrown in are lengthy musings on the town's history and troubled race relations—most of the Monsanto plaintiffs were from Anniston's poor, mostly black West Side—and the author's idyllic childhood there. The space given to extraneous human interest would have been better used filling out the author's sketchy, inadequate exposition of the science behind the competing environmental, medical and legal claims. (Aug. 15)
