Growing American Rubber
A new book out this month (June 2009) details America’s quest to find a viable source of domestic rubber and sever dependence on foreign suppliers.
Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security, by Mark R. Finlay, plots out intersecting networks of actors including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, prominent botanists, interned Japanese Americans, Haitian peasants, and ordinary citizens—all of whom contributed to this search for economic self-sufficiency. Challenging once-familiar boundaries between agriculture and industry and field and laboratory, Finlay also identifies an era in which perceived divisions between natural and synthetic came under review. Although synthetic rubber emerged from World War II as one solution, the issue of ever-diminishing natural resources and the question of how to meet consumer, military, and business demands lingers today.
For more information on the book, click here.
