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Interdisciplinary History
Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World by
Richard P. Tucker
Review by: Kurk Dorsey
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Summer, 2002), pp. 144-146
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3656959 .
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144
RUSSELL A. KAZAL
REVIEWS
145
146
ELISABETH
S. CLEMENS
people who have lived in the tropics-noting both that they had been
altering the landscape long before U.S. capital arrived on the scene and
that in the twentieth century, their leaders willingly worked with U.S.
business interests-he still focuses his fire on efforts at economic globalization. He sees it as largely an expanded version of what the United
States has been doing in the tropics for years. Its appetite for tropical resources, Tucker concludes, is ecologically indefensible, but until efforts
to curtail rampant consumerism gain widespread support, the tropics remain in mortal danger.
Kurk Dorsey
University of New Hampshire
The Wagesof Sickness:The Politicsof Health Insurancein ProgressiveAmerica.
By Beatrix Hoffman (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press,
2001) 261 pp. $39-95 cloth $17.95 paper
The puzzle of American exceptionalism takes many forms. For historians of social policy, the key questions are defined by comparisons with
Europe. Why was the United States precocious in providing public education, yet slow in establishing many provisions for workers and the elderly? And, unlike other industrialized nations, why did the United
States fail to lay the foundations for a system of universal health coverage?
In The Wages of Sickness,Hoffman asserts that "it could have happened here." Prior to the world war, many states had adopted workmen's compensation and mothers' pensions legislation. A system of
health and factory safety regulation was under construction. Momentum, it appeared, was with the advocates of comprehensive social provision. But in Hoffman's analysis, no economic determinism or functional
requirements guarantee the completion of a system of social provision.
Instead, she explores the coalition politics that promoted and opposed
policy initiatives. Insofar as successful policies enlarged their supporting
constituency, each battle was potentially a key turning point: "Had they
been successful, their plan might have planted the seeds of a full-fledged
system of universal health coverage in the United States" (i). But they
failed.
Hoffman focuses on the efforts to adopt health insurance in New
York State, where bills came before the legislature a number of times
and, in 1919, actually passed the state Senate. To explain why health insurance came closer to fruition in New York than in any other state but
ultimately failed, she reconstructs the key players and constituencies:
progressive reformers, health providers, fraternalinsurance orders, commercial insurance corporations, employers, organized labor, and
women's associations. In this complex political world, no one interest
controlled outcomes; the struggle for health insurance unfolded through