Acid rain has changed the face of the Adirondacks, created political tensions between the Northeast and the Midwest, and served as both a harbinger of global climate change and a "fire drill" for public- and private-sector responses to environmental crises. The history of acid rain research is a striking case in which a large-scale and long-term environmental problem was addressed in part through scientifically motivated changes in public policy.

In the 1970s, acid rain was viewed as a simple problem that was limited in scope and characterized by "dead," fishless lakes. Scientists...

Reclusive aristocrat Lady Camilla Davenport lives in the faded grandeur of Hetsoe House, the family seat. Left with the crippling debts of her late American husband, and mourning the death of their son in the 1960s, when the young family lived in the United States for a short time, her days are dominated by a long-term mental illness.

Her daughter, Lady Hattie-depleted and embittered from her role as sole carer for her mother-has defected to London to reinvent herself, and is in an unhappy marriage with a stockbroker who shuns his working class background. But when her child displays...