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A review by wanderinghill
Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains by Kerri Arsenault
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.0
It is not often a book prompts me to change things in my life, but reading this sobering look at pollutants and toxins with a focus on a town just over an hour away from where I live has already made me reevaluate some of the products I buy and started me thinking about how to be more involved in my local community.
I think that is my main takeaway from this book: corporations and a government that is often more concerned with appeasing those corporations than protecting its citizens won’t save us. That doesn’t mean we should completely separate ourselves from them, but it does mean we can’t sit around waiting for a solution to be handed to us. We need to work together, look out for each other, and have a community centered perspective, but without slipping into tribalism or excluding the “other”.
This was a really incisive book, and my main criticism is that, at times, the author goes down random avenues of thought that don’t really connect back to anything. The book also has photographs from time to time, but they never relate to the content on the pages where they appear.
It is always hard to say I enjoyed a book like this, but I found it an inspiring read and one that will stick with me.
I think that is my main takeaway from this book: corporations and a government that is often more concerned with appeasing those corporations than protecting its citizens won’t save us. That doesn’t mean we should completely separate ourselves from them, but it does mean we can’t sit around waiting for a solution to be handed to us. We need to work together, look out for each other, and have a community centered perspective, but without slipping into tribalism or excluding the “other”.
This was a really incisive book, and my main criticism is that, at times, the author goes down random avenues of thought that don’t really connect back to anything. The book also has photographs from time to time, but they never relate to the content on the pages where they appear.
It is always hard to say I enjoyed a book like this, but I found it an inspiring read and one that will stick with me.