The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology

Random House Inc, 1971. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Near Fine. Inscribed on the front free endpaper in red cursive: "To Eileen L. Johnston, with the good wishes of Barry Commoner." Johnston was the 1994 recipient of the Richard Beattly Mellon Environmental Stewardship Award. On the rear of the FFEP are three additional signatures: one from Bruce Ingersoll, journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the paper's first "environmental reporter," and two from officials of the Illinois Pollution Control Board,--Tom Harkes [sp?] and Jacob D. Dumelle--both dated Dec. 10, 1971, the year of publication. Chapter five of the book is about ground pollution in Illinois, meaning likely these signatures represent researchers or subjects important to the book. Barry Commoner was an important environmentalist who was called the "Paul Revere of ecology." From Wikipedia: "He had a long-running debate with Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb and his followers, arguing that they were too focused on overpopulation as the source of environmental problems, and that their proposed solutions were politically unacceptable because of the coercion that they implied, and because the cost would fall disproportionately on the poor. He believed that technological, and above all, social, development would lead to a natural decrease in both population growth and environmental damage." The Closing Circle is his second book and most influential. Uncommon signed, and rare with these additional signatures, which make it an association copy. An important piece in the U.S. environmental canon. Fine book but with some marginal lines, brackets, and tick marks to the the first chapter.