This review is an excerpt of Michael Pellechia's monthly BookPage business and finance book round-up.

Plastic

The Making of a Synthetic Century

By Stephen Fenichell
HarperBusiness, $25

ISBN 0887307329

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The joys of plastic revisited

Review by Michael Pellecchia

Our society's astonishment with plastic has hardened, ever since the 1967 film The Graduate and that famous quote (which opens this book) "I just want to say one word to you, Ben. Just one word."

Plastic is just one word, but that word barely captures its significance to our lives.

It's ubiquitous, it's art, it's culture, it's business . . . plastic has made society a much more surface place.

Warming to the apparent ironies of plastic, author Stephen Fenichell takes a breezy and irreverent approach to his "material." This approach makes his book Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century easy and pleasant to read.

Fenichell blends the chemistry, the history, and the pop culture of plastic into an intriguing compound for readers. He also surveys the environmental controversies molded by the existence of too much plastic in the world. This book is fun and will make you less impervious to our national material.

Michael Pellecchia writes about business and finance books for this publication. He can be reached at michael_pellecchia@bookpage.com.