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Stinking Stones and Rocks of Gold: Phosphate, Fertilizer, and Industrialization in Postbellum South Carolina. By Shepherd W. McKinley. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014. xii + 230 pp. Illustrations, photographs, maps, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $69.95. ISBN: 978-0-8130-4924-3

Rosner argue that if lead plagued the homes of wealthy and middle-class whites to the same degree that it affects the homes of poor African Americans, local governments would spend many more social resources on lead-abatement programs. Furthermore, because lead affects poorer socioeconomic groups disproportionately, it propagates and perpetuates social inequality. Markowitz and Rosner also emphasize how American society uses children exposed to lead as “canaries in a coal mine.” In particular, because monitoring and measuring lead is so costly, society has chosen to wait for children to exhibit symptoms of lead poisoning before doing anything to remediate the lead in any given home. In this way, children’s health serves as a monitoring device much like a canary was used to monitor air quality in a coal mine. Markowitz and Rosner suggest that this approach is morally bankrupt and that politicians would never allow it to happen if white children were working as the canaries. The fourth theme in LeadWars focuses on the detrimental effects of Reaganism, the policies and philosophies surrounding President Ronald Reagan. Reaganism, in the authors’ view, unduly focused on the costs of public actions to the detriment of public health. In the case of lead, Reaganism prompted the government to eschew costly but effective lead-abatement programs and to focus on cheaper and less effective procedures. It was therefore Reaganism that made the KKI study necessary. In a better world, a world not so obsessed with costs, KKI would have been able to focus on larger, more pressing lead-related questions. Thought provoking and well argued, LeadWars is an excellent book. I can recommend it highly to anyone with interests in lead poisoning, public health, political economy, and the intersection of science and public policy.