In 1970, a group of young lawyers launched a new kind of organisation
and helped secure the country's bedrock environmental laws. Ever since,
the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has harnessed its legal and
scientific expertise to become one of the fiercest protectors of public
health and the environment. In this recounting of NRDC's 50-year
history, cofounder John Adams tells the ongoing story about fighting the
world's most powerful polluters and winning. Alongside archival
photography and insider accounts, Adams celebrates a half century of
victories, everything from saving whales to getting lead pipes out of
Flint, Michigan, to protecting treasured landscapes, like Alaska's
Katmai National Park & Preserve. But the book is also a road map for
the future, offering hard-won lessons on how to tackle problems that
lie at the intersection of science and society. Today, as humanity faces
the climate crisis, the stakes have never been higher nor the solutions
more complex which is why NRDC remains uniquely positioned as the
earth's best defense.