cover image Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century

Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century

Stephen Fenichell. HarperCollins Publishers, $25 (356pp) ISBN 978-0-88730-732-4

This compelling, often surprising saga of the invention of plastic and its transformation of society will rivet your attention, challenge your preconceptions and open up new vistas of science, history and popular culture. Unlike detractors who dismiss plastic as tacky, cheap or environmentally unsound, Fenichell, a freelance writer, celebrates its unsung role in modern life. Polyethylene airborne-radar insulation (which the British had and the Nazis didn't) helped the Allies win the air war over Europe. Computer discs and audio- and videotape make possible the information age, while plastic hearts and limbs prolong and improve human life. Fenichell unreels a resilient tale of scientific discovery, tragedies, rare ingenuity, serendipity. Upstate New York printer John Wesley Hyatt failed in his quest to make the perfect non-ivory billiard ball, but instead, in 1868, created the first thermoplastic, the ideal material for the coming Machine Age. Depressive Harvard chemist Wallace Carothers invented synthetic silk (nylon) in 1934, but committed suicide three years later, obsessed with his failure as a scientist. Tracking vinyl, rayon, Teflon, Bakelite, polyester and so forth, Fenichell carries the story to pop art, Tupperware, environmental artist Christo's outdoor wrappings and new biodegradable plastics used in ecologically fashionable fibers, dissolvable films and recyclable bottles. $20,000 ad/promo. (July)