Theresa and John Want You to Get Angry

UPDATE: The venue has been changed for the Kerry reading. John Kerry and Theresa Heinz Kerry will read at the First Parish Church in Cambridge tomorrow, Saturday, April 21, at 12 noon.

Theresa Heinz Kerry, coauthor of This Moment on Earth, sounded furious when she and Senator John Kerry dialed into a conference call with a batch of bloggers. And she has reason to be mad because of the research she's assembled about how toxins have affected women's health.

Heinz Kerry, who is holding a conference on women's health and the environment in Pittsburgh today, said, "I hope the book will make you angry in the beginning. Because it should. The stories that we tell should give you a lift and hope. It should make you mad, and teach you, and inspire you."

One of Heinz Kerry's sections in This Moment on Earth discusses the Cape Cod Breast Cancer and Environment Study, which researched how pesticides in Cape Cod drinking water may have led to higher rates of breast cancer.

The findings mentioned in the book offer compelling evidence linking environmental causes to cancer. For example, "Breast-cancer risk was higher for women who had lived in or near areas treated for tree pests between 1948 and 1995, near cranberry bogs between 1948 and the mid-1970s, and near agricultural land since the 1970s. Risk was higher yet for women who had lived where no tree buffer existed to protect them from pesticide drift."

Heinz Kerry also describes This Moment on Earth in a way that distances it from the public perception of John Kerry as more of a dull professor than a charismatic politician. She emphasizes that their book is about the real world: "It's not didactic or prescriptive in any way. [The book] just gives ideas and asks for ideas because we two don't know everything of what we can do."

John Kerry, who never struck us as the type to get pissed off, still maintained mellow tones throughout the conversation, but we're hoping he gets fired up during the talk tomorrow.