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lgcullens's review
5.0
Book review of The Cyanide Canary: A True Story of Injustice by Robert Dugoni
Robert Dugoni, known for his heart-pounding legal thrillers, and Hilldorfer, the agent who lived and breathed the Dominguez case, have penned a compulsively readable work that is every bit as enthralling as fiction, yet is alarmingly true. It is a true story of good and evil, greed and its consequences, and an elusive quest for justice…
This marketing blurb didn't 'grab' me, but the book being non-fiction eco-lit prompted me to read it. The blurb is intended to catch the eye of thriller readers, and I hope it does in broadening awareness of a serious environmental problem. A problem we don't hear a lot about from major media because they are beholding to the same monied interests that created and are worsening the problem. What we do hear about are presented as isolated incidents, and even then that reporting lacks depth and ignores the broader context of the problem. This together with too many not wanting to hear about such problems brings to mind Pogo saying, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
As you might guess, this book is much more than a thriller to me.
For those with environmental consciousness this book is a rare breed of non-fiction, at once adrenalin pumping and an emotional rollercoaster together with suspense and Kafkaesque — enough to drive most anyone up a tree and potentially terrify them. Essentially, the story exemplifies the varying degrees of dark stain in our subjective souls, and the difficulties in dealing with such. And, it does so without the fictive distortions promulgated in the volume of 'entertainment' reading material available.
Knowing that throughout human history, civilizations have come and gone in good part due to greed induced corruption and ignorance, and that we are at present teetering on the precipice of repeating such history, a thoughtful reader will see more in this than the story's specific battle. Enough more that they may be acutely alarmed at the seriousness of this aspect's contributions to the ever more likely dire consequences of our environmental woes.
As you might imagine, the course of the subject case involved politicians, several government agencies, multiple investigators and reviewing attorneys, and a raft of interviewees and witnesses, not to mention all the laterally affected friends and family. The book includes a dramatis personae listing of forty-eight key personnel, and extensive footnotes to help, but still requires focus to keep all the interactions straight in one's mind. All what is to be expected in a faithful rendering of this scope and complexity, and I thought the book did a good job of not getting lost in detritus too many authors add to spice things up.
That doesn't mean there aren't any minor digressions that don't enhance the story. An example being a couple pages devoted to describing Pocatello, Idaho and its origins. Still in all, hopefully the lion's share of the story will nag readers' minds to reread (if necessary) enough of it to understand the serious scope of the environmental problem juxtaposed with human proclivities.
A little over the first half of the book is concerned with the incident and investigation, and this is where most of the overarching environmental issues can be gleaned. Much of the remainder of the book is concerned with courtroom drama and posttrial maneuvering through a minefield of legal gray areas, and this is where the reader can get an idea of the complexities in trying to deal with the human aspects.
Within the book there are many insightful passages and statements, such as:
"While he did not condone crime born of poverty, he sympathized with many of the defendants who stood before the bench. Given few opportunities in life and even fewer choices, drugs and crime became their only visible means to escape poverty. In stark contrast were the white-collar criminals ... people who had been given opportunities. Their crimes were those of the well educated and well heeled, crimes of greed, arrogance, and a blatant disregard for the rules that governed the rest of society ..."
"This was business, big business, with a lot of money at stake and a lot of money to spend. Politicians depended on big business and big business depended on politicians. It was the American way."
"... Breitsameter had tried enough white-collar criminals to know that too often only the defense lawyers got rich. The victim never saw a nickel."
And, there is a good deal of information that too many are not aware of, like:
"After World War II, as America’s industry turned from military to domestic production, the amount of hazardous waste skyrocketed. It increased further with the organic chemistry industry’s development of new products like plastics, electronic components, and modern construction materials and their chemical waste by-products, which were not biodegradable and could remain toxic for thousands of years. In addition there were too few hazardous waste disposal sites in the country to handle the waste and the contents; locations and disposal practices of those that did exist were largely unknown. America was sitting on hundreds of hazardous time bombs without any reasonable way to determine where they all were, when the next would go off, and how bad the damage would be.
"But if the unknown was disconcerting, what was universally accepted as fact was downright scary. The EPA was realizing that massive quantities of toxic contaminants had already been released into the environment and the polluting wasn’t likely to end soon. The primary reason?
"Greed."
After reading the story, I urge thoughtful consideration of the Epilogue and Afterward. My hope is that a critical mass of people will come to realize that our little blue canoe can not be plundered and treated like a huge garbage dump if man hopes to continue to exist.
This book is not only an important read, but a must read if you value your future. The inculcation of neoliberalism in our culture has fostered widespread pleonexia, to the point of laying waste to an environment necessary for human existence, and utter indifference to others' suffering.
"Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value." ~ Albert Einstein
Robert Dugoni, known for his heart-pounding legal thrillers, and Hilldorfer, the agent who lived and breathed the Dominguez case, have penned a compulsively readable work that is every bit as enthralling as fiction, yet is alarmingly true. It is a true story of good and evil, greed and its consequences, and an elusive quest for justice…
This marketing blurb didn't 'grab' me, but the book being non-fiction eco-lit prompted me to read it. The blurb is intended to catch the eye of thriller readers, and I hope it does in broadening awareness of a serious environmental problem. A problem we don't hear a lot about from major media because they are beholding to the same monied interests that created and are worsening the problem. What we do hear about are presented as isolated incidents, and even then that reporting lacks depth and ignores the broader context of the problem. This together with too many not wanting to hear about such problems brings to mind Pogo saying, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
As you might guess, this book is much more than a thriller to me.
For those with environmental consciousness this book is a rare breed of non-fiction, at once adrenalin pumping and an emotional rollercoaster together with suspense and Kafkaesque — enough to drive most anyone up a tree and potentially terrify them. Essentially, the story exemplifies the varying degrees of dark stain in our subjective souls, and the difficulties in dealing with such. And, it does so without the fictive distortions promulgated in the volume of 'entertainment' reading material available.
Knowing that throughout human history, civilizations have come and gone in good part due to greed induced corruption and ignorance, and that we are at present teetering on the precipice of repeating such history, a thoughtful reader will see more in this than the story's specific battle. Enough more that they may be acutely alarmed at the seriousness of this aspect's contributions to the ever more likely dire consequences of our environmental woes.
As you might imagine, the course of the subject case involved politicians, several government agencies, multiple investigators and reviewing attorneys, and a raft of interviewees and witnesses, not to mention all the laterally affected friends and family. The book includes a dramatis personae listing of forty-eight key personnel, and extensive footnotes to help, but still requires focus to keep all the interactions straight in one's mind. All what is to be expected in a faithful rendering of this scope and complexity, and I thought the book did a good job of not getting lost in detritus too many authors add to spice things up.
That doesn't mean there aren't any minor digressions that don't enhance the story. An example being a couple pages devoted to describing Pocatello, Idaho and its origins. Still in all, hopefully the lion's share of the story will nag readers' minds to reread (if necessary) enough of it to understand the serious scope of the environmental problem juxtaposed with human proclivities.
A little over the first half of the book is concerned with the incident and investigation, and this is where most of the overarching environmental issues can be gleaned. Much of the remainder of the book is concerned with courtroom drama and posttrial maneuvering through a minefield of legal gray areas, and this is where the reader can get an idea of the complexities in trying to deal with the human aspects.
Within the book there are many insightful passages and statements, such as:
"While he did not condone crime born of poverty, he sympathized with many of the defendants who stood before the bench. Given few opportunities in life and even fewer choices, drugs and crime became their only visible means to escape poverty. In stark contrast were the white-collar criminals ... people who had been given opportunities. Their crimes were those of the well educated and well heeled, crimes of greed, arrogance, and a blatant disregard for the rules that governed the rest of society ..."
"This was business, big business, with a lot of money at stake and a lot of money to spend. Politicians depended on big business and big business depended on politicians. It was the American way."
"... Breitsameter had tried enough white-collar criminals to know that too often only the defense lawyers got rich. The victim never saw a nickel."
And, there is a good deal of information that too many are not aware of, like:
"After World War II, as America’s industry turned from military to domestic production, the amount of hazardous waste skyrocketed. It increased further with the organic chemistry industry’s development of new products like plastics, electronic components, and modern construction materials and their chemical waste by-products, which were not biodegradable and could remain toxic for thousands of years. In addition there were too few hazardous waste disposal sites in the country to handle the waste and the contents; locations and disposal practices of those that did exist were largely unknown. America was sitting on hundreds of hazardous time bombs without any reasonable way to determine where they all were, when the next would go off, and how bad the damage would be.
"But if the unknown was disconcerting, what was universally accepted as fact was downright scary. The EPA was realizing that massive quantities of toxic contaminants had already been released into the environment and the polluting wasn’t likely to end soon. The primary reason?
"Greed."
After reading the story, I urge thoughtful consideration of the Epilogue and Afterward. My hope is that a critical mass of people will come to realize that our little blue canoe can not be plundered and treated like a huge garbage dump if man hopes to continue to exist.
This book is not only an important read, but a must read if you value your future. The inculcation of neoliberalism in our culture has fostered widespread pleonexia, to the point of laying waste to an environment necessary for human existence, and utter indifference to others' suffering.
"Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value." ~ Albert Einstein
gengelcox's review
4.0
We lived and worked in eastern Washington State during the mid-1990s for environmental companies and both had to take safety classes where they explained the dangers of confined space entries and the precautions you have to take for working in those environments, not to mention all the other regulatory and safety requirements needed for working with hazardous chemicals. We were lucky: we were educated, well-paid, working for environmental clean-up companies with lucrative government contracts where safety was good business practice.
The circumstances detailed in The Cyanide Canary are 180 degrees different. Allen Elias, the owner of the Evergreen facility, was not engaged in environmental cleanup, but working on the cheap trying to develop a commercial means of reprocessing waste. His employees were high-school graduates desperate for a job, with no safety training or understanding of the requirements for confined space work, nor any clue, really, about the hazards of certain chemicals--things Elias did know. Which is why Elias was charged with criminal conduct after one of his workers was injured during a tank cleanout. The story of the accident, along with the resulting investigation, and trial, makes up this book, which reads like a long Law & Order episode, almost complete with the "Ka-Chung" sound at the end of each chapter. As such, it should appeal to L&O fans, or anyone with an interest in how environmental law is being developed.
The weakest part of the book is the beginning chapter, where the authors attempt to portray the events of the accident in an almost novelistic method, including trying for some suspense about whether the victim, Scott Dominguez, would survive or not. After they get that out of the way (more than likely, a suggestion from some bone-headed editor who felt the beginning needed some punch or a grab for the reader), the book settles down into its portrayal of Hilldorfer's investigation, bolstered by all the interviews and transcripts that were eventually used to indict Elias and bring the case to trial. The truly riveting part of the book is not the opening, but the trial, the question of whether Elias will be found guilty, and whether or not he will attempt to flee justice.
I enjoyed the book quite a bit, reading it in two sessions during a train ride to and from NYC. It's a revealing look into the legal world, and also an interesting case study between the kinds of murder cases usually seen on Law & Order and the "white collar" crime that usually does not end up in jail sentences for the convicted.
The circumstances detailed in The Cyanide Canary are 180 degrees different. Allen Elias, the owner of the Evergreen facility, was not engaged in environmental cleanup, but working on the cheap trying to develop a commercial means of reprocessing waste. His employees were high-school graduates desperate for a job, with no safety training or understanding of the requirements for confined space work, nor any clue, really, about the hazards of certain chemicals--things Elias did know. Which is why Elias was charged with criminal conduct after one of his workers was injured during a tank cleanout. The story of the accident, along with the resulting investigation, and trial, makes up this book, which reads like a long Law & Order episode, almost complete with the "Ka-Chung" sound at the end of each chapter. As such, it should appeal to L&O fans, or anyone with an interest in how environmental law is being developed.
The weakest part of the book is the beginning chapter, where the authors attempt to portray the events of the accident in an almost novelistic method, including trying for some suspense about whether the victim, Scott Dominguez, would survive or not. After they get that out of the way (more than likely, a suggestion from some bone-headed editor who felt the beginning needed some punch or a grab for the reader), the book settles down into its portrayal of Hilldorfer's investigation, bolstered by all the interviews and transcripts that were eventually used to indict Elias and bring the case to trial. The truly riveting part of the book is not the opening, but the trial, the question of whether Elias will be found guilty, and whether or not he will attempt to flee justice.
I enjoyed the book quite a bit, reading it in two sessions during a train ride to and from NYC. It's a revealing look into the legal world, and also an interesting case study between the kinds of murder cases usually seen on Law & Order and the "white collar" crime that usually does not end up in jail sentences for the convicted.
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