"By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change;including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. [This] is their story" Publisher marketing.

Introduction : the reckoning -- Part I. Shouts in the street : 1979-1982 -- The whole banana : spring 1979 -- Mirror worlds : spring 1979 -- Between clambake and chaos : July 1979 -- Enter Cassandra, raving : 1979-1980 -- A very aggressive defensive program : 1979-1980 -- Tiger on the road : October 1980 -- A deluge most unnatural : November 1980-September 1981 -- Heroes and villains : March 1982 -- The direction of an impending catastrophe : 1982. Part II. Bad science fiction : 1983-1988. -- Caution not panic : 1983-1984 -- The world of action : 1985 -- The ozone in October : Fall 1985-Summer 1986 -- Atmospheric scientist, New York, N.Y. : Fall 1987-spring 1988. Part III. ?t You will see things that you shall believe : 1988-1989 -- Nothing but bonfires : summer 1988 -- Signal weather : June 1988 --Woodstock for climate change : June 1988-April 1989 -- Fragmented world : fall 1988 -- The great includer and the old engineer : spring 1989 -- Natural processes : May 1989 -- The White House effect : spring-fall 1989 -- Skunks at the garden party : November 1989 -- Afterword: Glass-bottomed boats.