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It's useful to realize that this book is published by the Cato Institute, whose founders include the politically active Koch brothers who run Koch Industries. Koch Industries would have to pay estimated billions if We the People charged for dumping carbon emissions in the atmosphere, or more closely regulated chemical emissions. As is, they lobby tirelessly to continue the free usage of the public commons such as air and water, and to deny or obfuscate issues about climate change, chemical releases, etc. The premise of this book is off, as it disputes Rachel Carson's precautionary warnings to more rigorously test the health and environmental impacts of synthetic chemicals before they are widely distributed into the environment. The fact is, only a handful (five) of 80,000 synthetic industrial chemicals in use have been banned, and not very many of them have been rigorously tested, as the ex-administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, stated. Recent studies have shown that new babies may already have up to 300 synthetic chemicals in their bodies at birth. As Naomi Oreskes states in her excellent book "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming," Rachel Carson is an "American hero" for her work in alerting the public to the harms of indiscriminate chemical dumping. Oreskes also points out that there has been a concerted effort by corporate libertarians to confuse the science around issues that may lead to regulation. Oreskes writes, "In the demonizing of Rachel Carson, free marketeers realized that if you could convince people that an example of successful government regulation wasn't, in fact, successful--that is was actually a mistake--you could strengthen the argument against regulation in general." Libertarians should be lauded for their defense of freedom and caution against government overreach, but they seem to not understand that too much corporate control also has its threats to individual freedom. For instance, Rachel Carson urged Congress to establish the freedom of individuals to be free from the toxic pollution of other people. This book would be more useful if it reckoned with that important insight with broader perspective.