Carol Van Strum is a writer, bookseller, ruthless editor, chronic book reviewer, and seasoned troublemaker. Previous publications include “A Bitter Fog: Herbicides and Human Rights” (Sierra Club Books, 1983, 2014), “No Margin of Safety” (Greenpeace 1987), “The Politics of Penta (Greenpeace 1989), and The Oreo File (2016).
From 1980 to the mid-1990s her many book reviews (several hundred) were commissioned by The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, and other publications. She has been a proof-reader and toxics and legal researcher for environmental lawyers since 1975, and was sole editor and on-line book reviewer for The Department of the Planet Earth until the demise of its founder, as well as researcher and copy editor for Mongabay.com, and the journal Tropical Conservation Science.
This year (2017) her work was instrumental in her county’s first voter-approved ban of aerial pesticide spraying in the nation.