“At the end of the 1920s, advertising beat the drum to spread marvelous news: “Fly, don’t ride.” Leaded gasoline made you go faster, and going faster meant getting ahead in life. The ads showed a car going at a snail’s pace, and the embarrassed child inside: “Gee, Pop, they’re all passing you!”
“Gasoline with lead additives was invented in the United States, and from the United States a barrage of advertising imposed it on the world. In 1986, when the U.S. government finally decided to outlaw it, the number of victims of lead poisoning was incalculable. It was known all along that leaded gasoline was killing adults in the United States at a rate of five thousand a year, and causing irreparable damage to the nervous systems and mental development of millions of children.
“The principle authors of this crime were two executives from General Motors, Charles Kettering and Alfred Sloan. They have gone down in history as generous benefactors of humanity. They founded a hospital.” – Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone is a wonderful book of poetic short stories, telling stories from history, always from the prospective of the downtrodden and oppressed. Almost all of the stories are between a few paragraphs and 2 pages. Great subway, bathroom, before bed reading. You can literally open the book up randomly whenever you have a few spare moments. No matter what page you find yourself on, you won’t be disappointed. Check it out today.
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