Vonnegut''s major apocalyptic trio - Cat''s Cradle, Slapstick, and Galapagos - prompt broad global, national, and specieslevel thinking about environmental issues through dramatic and fantastic scenarios. This book tells the story of the origins and legacy of what Kurt Vonnegut understood as ''planetary citizenship'' and explores key roots, influences, literary techniques, and artistic expressions of his interest in environmental activism through his writing. Vonnegut saw writing itself as an act of good citizenship, as a way of ''poisoning'' the minds of young people ''with humanity ... to encourage them to make a better world.'' Often that literary activism meant addressing real social and environmental problems - polluted water, soil, and air; the plasticization of cultures and lives; racial and economic injustice; isolating and dehumanizing technologies; and lives and landscapes desolated by war. Vonnegut''s remedies took many forms, from the redemptive power of the arts to artific
