Uncertain Hazards: Environmental Activists and Scientific Proof. By Sylvia Noble Tesh. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 192p. $35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.

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Uncertain Hazards is an ambitious book, in two respects. First, it tackles an important issue for political science as well as sociology and history, namely, the impact that social movements have on reshaping the societies in which they mobilize. Second, in adopting a case study approach to this issue, the author explores the development of the modern environmental movement and its purported reframing or hegemonic reversal of environmental science and risk assessment in America. In effect, this volume is two separate but related studies. Indeed, Sylvia Noble Tesh suggests as much when she notes in her acknowledgments that her “theme shifted as the book took shape” (p. xi).