WINNER of the 2022 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction!
WINNER of the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction!
“Plastic is powerful and moving, a deep, personal exploration of the modern world.”—Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize recipient for The Making of the Atomic Bomb
In Plastic: An Autobiography, Cobb’s obsession with a large plastic car part leads her to explore the violence of our consume-and-dispose culture, including her own life as a child of Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were made. The journey exposes the interconnections among plastic waste, climate change, nuclear technologies, and racism. Using a series of interwoven narratives―from ancient Phoenicia to Alabama―the book bears witness to our deepest entanglements and asks how humans continue on this planet.
WINNER of the 2022 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction!
WINNER of the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction!
“Plastic is powerful and moving, a deep, personal exploration of the modern world.”—Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize recipient for The Making of the Atomic Bomb
In Plastic: An Autobiography, Cobb’s obsession with a large plastic car part leads her to explore the violence of our consume-and-dispose culture, including her own life as a child of Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were made. The journey exposes the interconnections among plastic waste, climate change, nuclear technologies, and racism. Using a series of interwoven narratives―from ancient Phoenicia to Alabama―the book bears witness to our deepest entanglements and asks how humans continue on this planet.