In After Cooling, Eric Dean Wilson braids together air-conditioning history, climate science, road trips, and philosophy to tell the story of the birth, life, and afterlife of Freon, the refrigerant that ripped a hole larger than the continental United States in the ozone layer.
"Meticulously researched and engagingly written" (Amitav Ghosh), this "knockout debut" ( New York Journal of Books) offers a rare glimpse of environmental hope, suggesting that maybe the vast and terrifying problem of global warming is not beyond our grasp to face.This “ambitious delightful” ( The New York Times) work of literary nonfiction interweaves the science and history of the powerful refrigerant (and dangerous greenhouse gas) Freon with a haunting meditation on how to live meaningfully and morally in a rapidly heating world. Wilson is at heart an essayist, looking far and wide to tease out what particular forces in American culture-in capitalism, in systemic racism, in our values-combined to lead us into the Freon crisis and then out. As he traces the refrigerant's life span from its invention in the 1920s-when it was hailed as a miracle of scientific progress-to efforts in the 1980s to ban the chemical (and the resulting political backlash), Wilson finds himself on a journey through the American heartland, trailing a man who buys up old tanks of Freon stockpiled in attics and basements to destroy what remains of the chemical before it can do further harm. This "ambitious delightful" ( The New York Times) work of literary nonfiction interweaves the science and history of the powerful refrigerant (and dangerous greenhouse gas) Freon with a haunting meditation on how to live meaningfully and morally in a rapidly heating world.
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