Although Fenichell tells us that British scientists discovered polyethylene during World War II, he later correctly traces its discovery to 1933. Norman Mailer is misquoted, with one of his sinuous riffs chopped into three short sentences for easy reading. It appears that Fenichell was ill served by his editors at HarperBusiness, who also let numerous stylistic oddities pass and even missed a glaring typo in the book's opening sentence. But no amount of editing could repair a book whose research is so casually flawed. The author seems to consider facts to be as malleable as plastic.
Plastic is a simulacrum corresponding only approximately to reality.
But my own research has made me aware that such a dismissal trivializes synthetic materials' complex, ambiguous contributions to the 20th century. In choosing surface over substance, Fenichell merely glides over the rich details.