The Toxic Ship

Simone M. Mueller is Heisenberg Professor for Global Environmental History and Environmental Humanities at the University of Augsburg. She is author of Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks.

"[B]rilliant . . . One of Mueller's main merits is that she has been able to offer a simultaneously concise, elegant, and illustrative narrative." (H-Environment) "An exceptional book about the history of a ship and the waste that it contained, a waste so extraordinary that it challenged the political order of Philadelphia, questioned the scientific authority of U.S. government agencies, and remade the global waste trade. . . . [W]hat Mueller demonstrates so well was how this one ship with its one load of waste was itself a shadow proxy of the technological and scientific developments occurring across multiple industries, a history that is tightly linked to environmental justice concerns and long-standing patterns of racial and toxic colonialism in the United States and the Global South." (Technology and Culture) "What makes The Toxic Ship such an insightful and enjoyable book lies in Mueller's careful work to keep the essential drama and outrage of that headline-making story while also fleshing out the many contexts that fueled the ship's long purgatory at sea. . . . Mueller's book deserves a spot not just in the growing historiography of the environmental justice movement but as a crucial text in understanding the centrality of oceans as sites of creating and consolidating unequal global relations." (American Historical Review) "[I]llustrates timely concepts that serve waste studies well from the crucial perspective of recent global history." (Journal of American History) "Mueller's narrative style provides ample background context for readers unfamiliar with waste history. . . . The Toxic Ship is a significant addition to scholarship on the global context of environmental (in)justice and is suitable for advanced undergraduates. Recommended for scholars and general readers interested in waste studies, colonialist legacies within globalization, and environmental policy." (Environmental History)