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Library of America #307
Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment
Here is one of the landmark books of the twentieth century together with an unprecedented collection of letters, speeches, and essays—most published here for the first time—that reveals the extraordinary courage and insight of its author, Rachel Carson. These writings tell the surprising and inspiring story of how Silent Spring came to be, tracing an arc from Carson’s first inklings of the potential harms of DDT in the 1940s to her resolute public defense of her findings in the face of a concerted disinformation campaign launched by the chemical industry, even as she struggled privately with the cancer that would take her life.
Silent Spring was an unlikely best seller when published in the fall of 1962, a book about the unintended consequences of pesticide use that became the talk of the nation, sparking a revolution in environmental consciousness. Seeing clearly what no one else had in a dauntingly wide-ranging body of technical and scientific evidence, Carson turned a series of discrete findings into a work of enduring literature—one that helped to change the world. In the wake of Silent Spring, public debate and protest led to laws and agencies to protect our air, land, and water, and a new appreciation for what Carson calls “the right of the citizen to be secure in his own home against the intrusions of poisons applied by other persons.”
This deluxe Library of America edition presents the complete text of the first edition of Silent Spring, featuring Lois and Louis Darling’s original illustrations, in conjunction with a selection of Carson’s other writings on the environment, including fascinating correspondence with ornithologists, medical researchers, ecologists, biochemists, and other experts that shows Silent Spring taking shape piece-by-piece, like a puzzle or detective story. As she makes common cause with gardeners, concerned citizens, and grassroots activists to build awareness about environmental degradation, we see Carson emerge as a champion for unbiased science, collective action, and above all reverence for life. In speeches and editorials from the period after the her well-funded critics, exposing industry influence within scientific societies and government policy-making. Other pieces reflect her lifelong love of nature and commitment to conservation, lyrically describing her epiphanies as birdwatcher and beachcomber, her dream of preserving forest land in Maine for future generations, and the joy she took in conveying an outdoor “sense of wonder” to her young adopted son.
An introduction by writer and biologist Sandra Steingraber explores Carson’s life and career, and describes some of the contemporary environmental science for which she blazed a trail. Also included are a 16-page portfolio of photographs, a detailed chronology, and helpful notes.
Silent Spring was an unlikely best seller when published in the fall of 1962, a book about the unintended consequences of pesticide use that became the talk of the nation, sparking a revolution in environmental consciousness. Seeing clearly what no one else had in a dauntingly wide-ranging body of technical and scientific evidence, Carson turned a series of discrete findings into a work of enduring literature—one that helped to change the world. In the wake of Silent Spring, public debate and protest led to laws and agencies to protect our air, land, and water, and a new appreciation for what Carson calls “the right of the citizen to be secure in his own home against the intrusions of poisons applied by other persons.”
This deluxe Library of America edition presents the complete text of the first edition of Silent Spring, featuring Lois and Louis Darling’s original illustrations, in conjunction with a selection of Carson’s other writings on the environment, including fascinating correspondence with ornithologists, medical researchers, ecologists, biochemists, and other experts that shows Silent Spring taking shape piece-by-piece, like a puzzle or detective story. As she makes common cause with gardeners, concerned citizens, and grassroots activists to build awareness about environmental degradation, we see Carson emerge as a champion for unbiased science, collective action, and above all reverence for life. In speeches and editorials from the period after the her well-funded critics, exposing industry influence within scientific societies and government policy-making. Other pieces reflect her lifelong love of nature and commitment to conservation, lyrically describing her epiphanies as birdwatcher and beachcomber, her dream of preserving forest land in Maine for future generations, and the joy she took in conveying an outdoor “sense of wonder” to her young adopted son.
An introduction by writer and biologist Sandra Steingraber explores Carson’s life and career, and describes some of the contemporary environmental science for which she blazed a trail. Also included are a 16-page portfolio of photographs, a detailed chronology, and helpful notes.
625 pages, Hardcover
Published May 27, 2018
23 people are currently reading
538 people want to read
About the author
Rachel Carson
53 books1,735 followersRachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.
Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.
Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and it inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
A variety of groups ranging from government institutions to environmental and conservation organizations to scholarly societies have celebrated Carson's life and work since her death. Perhaps most significantly, on June 9, 1980, Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. A 17¢ Great Americans series postage stamp was issued in her honor the following year; several other countries have since issued Carson postage as well.
Carson's birthplace and childhood home in Springdale, Pennsylvania — now known as the Rachel Carson Homestead—became a National Register of Historic Places site, and the nonprofit Rachel Carson Homestead Association was created in 1975 to manage it. Her home in Colesville, Maryland where she wrote Silent Spring was named a National Historic Landmark in 1991. Near Pittsburgh, a 35.7 miles (57 km) hiking trail, maintained by the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, was dedicated to Carson in 1975. A Pittsburgh bridge was also renamed in Carson's honor as the Rachel Carson Bridge. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection State Office Building in Harrisburg is named in her honor. Elementary schools in Gaithersburg, Montgomery County, Maryland, Sammamish, Washington and San Jose, California were named in her honor, as were middle schools in Beaverton, Oregon and Herndon, Virginia (Rachel Carson Middle School), and a high school in Brooklyn, New York.
Between 1964 and 1990, 650 acres (3 km2) near Brookeville in Montgomery County, Maryland were acquired and set aside as the Rachel Carson Conservation Park, administered by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. In 1969, the Coastal Maine National Wildlife Refuge became the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge; expansions will bring the size of the refuge to about 9,125 acres (37 km2). In 1985, North Carolina renamed one of its estuarine reserves in honor of Carson, in Beaufort.
Carson is also a frequent namesake for prizes awarded by philanthropic, educational and scholarly institutions. The Rachel Carson Prize, founded in Stavanger, Norway in 1991, is awarded to women who have made a contribution in the field of environmental protection. The American Society for Environmental History has awarded the Rachel Carson Prize for Best Dissertation since 1993. Since 1998, the Society for Social Studies of Science has awarded an annual Rachel Carson Book Prize for "a book length work of social or political relevance in the area of science and technology studies."
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_C...
Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.
Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and it inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
A variety of groups ranging from government institutions to environmental and conservation organizations to scholarly societies have celebrated Carson's life and work since her death. Perhaps most significantly, on June 9, 1980, Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. A 17¢ Great Americans series postage stamp was issued in her honor the following year; several other countries have since issued Carson postage as well.
Carson's birthplace and childhood home in Springdale, Pennsylvania — now known as the Rachel Carson Homestead—became a National Register of Historic Places site, and the nonprofit Rachel Carson Homestead Association was created in 1975 to manage it. Her home in Colesville, Maryland where she wrote Silent Spring was named a National Historic Landmark in 1991. Near Pittsburgh, a 35.7 miles (57 km) hiking trail, maintained by the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, was dedicated to Carson in 1975. A Pittsburgh bridge was also renamed in Carson's honor as the Rachel Carson Bridge. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection State Office Building in Harrisburg is named in her honor. Elementary schools in Gaithersburg, Montgomery County, Maryland, Sammamish, Washington and San Jose, California were named in her honor, as were middle schools in Beaverton, Oregon and Herndon, Virginia (Rachel Carson Middle School), and a high school in Brooklyn, New York.
Between 1964 and 1990, 650 acres (3 km2) near Brookeville in Montgomery County, Maryland were acquired and set aside as the Rachel Carson Conservation Park, administered by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. In 1969, the Coastal Maine National Wildlife Refuge became the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge; expansions will bring the size of the refuge to about 9,125 acres (37 km2). In 1985, North Carolina renamed one of its estuarine reserves in honor of Carson, in Beaufort.
Carson is also a frequent namesake for prizes awarded by philanthropic, educational and scholarly institutions. The Rachel Carson Prize, founded in Stavanger, Norway in 1991, is awarded to women who have made a contribution in the field of environmental protection. The American Society for Environmental History has awarded the Rachel Carson Prize for Best Dissertation since 1993. Since 1998, the Society for Social Studies of Science has awarded an annual Rachel Carson Book Prize for "a book length work of social or political relevance in the area of science and technology studies."
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_C...
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 27, 2019
Earth Day turns fifty in the spring. But some say that it began eight years earlier with the publication of this book. And before that, Rachel Carson’s interest in the ecological consequences of DDT dates to the forties, when she tried to interest the Reader’s Digest in an article.
INTRODUCTION. This quality edition published last year. An excellent fifty-page introduction adds context and brings us current on the book’s impact. While modern science supersedes much of the science and many of the details in this book, Carson captures her passion and understanding of the day, which makes a current reading like peering into an important time capsule.
Silent Spring discusses nineteen pesticides, including DDT. This was the first book to assimilate information on the risks, writes Sandra Steingraber in her introduction. It awakened the public to the connections between people and the ecological world, becoming a founding force of the modern environmental movement.
Within ten years, this book led to creation of the EPA as well as inspiring federal acts, such as the ones for clean water, clean air, wilderness and endangered species.
Carson makes several points clear in the book, as summarized by Steingraber in her deep introduction:
We all became contaminated without our permission. Pesticides also kill the natural enemies of the targeted insect. The public needs to know about the risks, including how pesticide residue clings to food crops. We take needless risks because elegant and nontoxic methods of pest control exist.
Carson cites hundreds of sources, which runs over fifty pages. She treated each one as a piece of the puzzle, writes Steingraber. Woven together, they tell the big story. The science here reveals many unintended consequences. Carson upended the cultural narrative about science and nature.
New chemicals came home from the war as heroes. World War II ushered in the era of cancer-causing synthetic chemicals. Carson traces the rise of cancer through the early sixties. She was ahead of her time, Steingraber writes. Carson believed she saw early signs of a cancer epidemic. Research findings of the day began to show a link between pesticides and breast cancer.
The New Yorker serialized Silent Spring in three installments before the book published. Carson stood firm on the data in face of “withering and cruel attacks,” says Steingraber.
A sense of outrage and moral responsibility drove Carson to write Silent Spring. Despite enemies that the book made for her, “she persevered through strength of character and depth of commitment,” Steingraber concludes.
SILENT SPRING, the book itself, fills half the pages in this fine and interesting edition.
Rachel Carson opens with a fable. “A grim specter has crept upon us.”
Adjusting to the new chemicals would require time on the scale of nature, generations of human time. Instead of calling these “insecticides” and “herbicides,” we need to call them “biocides,” Carson advocates. How can we want to control a few unwanted species while contaminating the environment, she asks. It is “a train of disaster.”
DDT’s properties as an insecticide became known in the late thirties. It passes from one organism to another up the food chain, accumulating from alfalfa to hens’ eggs, for example.
Synthetic chemicals in large volume began in the forties, leading to “our unthinking bludgeoning of the landscape,” writes Carson.
And No Birds Sing, a chapter halfway in, includes a few stories from Milwaukee and Wisconsin.
In Whitefish Bay at least a thousand myrtle warblers migrated through the suburb on Lake Michigan, just north of Milwaukee. But observers spotted only two of the birds after spraying elms in the late fifties.
“DDT kills indiscriminately,” wrote Owen Gromme in a letter to The Milwaukee Journal. Gromme, bird curator at the Milwaukee Public Museum, reported that calls and letters increased about dead and dying birds after the spraying and fogging began in Wisconsin.
“Can anyone imagine anything so cheerless and dreary as a springtime without a robin’s song?” wrote another Wisconsin woman. And yet another wrote to The Journal that she dreaded the day when beautiful birds will die in her backyard.
Reports from around the world differed in detail while repeating the theme of dead wildlife after pesticides. By the fifties, researchers found DDT in mammal gonads.
We have been “slow to adopt a commonsense approach to the cancer problem,” wrote Carson. We are neglecting an opportunity to prevent although we pursue a cure, she observes.
A hundred years ago, scientists wondered if insects could become resistant to spray. By the fifties, resistance rose following the intense application of the new chemicals. True to Darwin's theory, spraying killed off the weak while the strong ones lived and bred.
The first medical use of modern insecticides occurred in Italy during World War II, a successful war on typhus by dusting many people with DDT. A two-hour program from two years ago https://www.pbs.org/video/american-ex... includes film clips of that dusting, which today seems cruel because of what we know now. This book pairs well with the video. It gives a great overview of Rachel Carson and Silent Spring but does not substitute for the book.
If insects can become resistant, what about humans? That would take hundred of years.
Carson closes with Robert Frost in mind. Two roads diverge, but they are not equal choices. The one “less traveled by” preserves the earth.
OTHER WRITINGS appears as a big section that I planned to skip. But these five dozen pieces read as pithier and more direct because most of them, mostly letters, were written for an audience of one, making it an essential part of this edition that captures her thoughts on the environment from the midforties to the midsixties. These entries reveal Carson’s evolving thought on how to tell the story:
Four years before Silent Spring published, Carson proposed an article about DDT spraying in a nine-paragraph letter to to E B White at The New Yorker. In reply, the magazine wanted fifty-thousand words in three installments.
In a letter to William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, Carson wanted to give primary attention to human health while framing the article about disturbances to all living things. She wanted to “build a really damning case against these chemicals as used against us.” No one knows yet what the effects of lifetime exposure will become, as she wrote to Shawn sixty years ago.
“To many of us, this sudden silence of the song of the birds, this obliteration of color and beauty and interest of bird life, is sufficient cause for sharp regret,” Carson wrote in a letter to The Washington Post.
Rachel Carson served on the Natural Resources Committee of the Democratic National Committee sixty years ago. Authorities, she wrote at the time, believe that humanity faces its greatest threat from the environment. She described the chemical contamination of the environment as “serious” with the primary source coming from insecticides and weed killers spread on “a massive scale” that distributes poisons over areas not intended as targets, thanks to wind and drift.
The spraying is self-defeating, wrote Carson to Paul Brooks, editor-in-chief at Houghton Mifflin, a year before publishing the book. Because the mosquitoes become resistant, the mosquito “gets the last laugh.” Brooks suggested the title for the book. He appears in an earlier video telling how he stood up to criticism of the book. https://shop.pbs.org/american-experie... The library holds this DVD.
Silent Spring published a couple of years later than Carson planned. The book generated letters from people who wanted the abuses to come under control. Meanwhile, the attacks on her used well-known techniques, such as discrediting Carson and misrepresenting her position.
In her last talk published here, Carson expressed her concern with “the reckless use of chemicals." The battle for a sane policy began before Silent Spring and will continue, she told the Garden Club of America.
THIS IS AN EXCELLENT deluxe quality edition. Well worth the time spent with it. I will read other books in this Library of America series.
AGENT ORANGE, also developed during World War II, used as an herbicide and defoliant in Vietnam. The VA presumes that Agent Orange causes prostate cancer among those of us exposed to it in Nam. I received my diagnosis this spring. This book lived on my to-read shelf for a long time. I wanted to read it before the Earth Day fiftieth. And now, since my diagnosis, I wanted to read it for what the book revealed about what we knew then about these chemicals before we sprayed twelve million gallons in Vietnam.
INTRODUCTION. This quality edition published last year. An excellent fifty-page introduction adds context and brings us current on the book’s impact. While modern science supersedes much of the science and many of the details in this book, Carson captures her passion and understanding of the day, which makes a current reading like peering into an important time capsule.
Silent Spring discusses nineteen pesticides, including DDT. This was the first book to assimilate information on the risks, writes Sandra Steingraber in her introduction. It awakened the public to the connections between people and the ecological world, becoming a founding force of the modern environmental movement.
Within ten years, this book led to creation of the EPA as well as inspiring federal acts, such as the ones for clean water, clean air, wilderness and endangered species.
Carson makes several points clear in the book, as summarized by Steingraber in her deep introduction:
We all became contaminated without our permission. Pesticides also kill the natural enemies of the targeted insect. The public needs to know about the risks, including how pesticide residue clings to food crops. We take needless risks because elegant and nontoxic methods of pest control exist.
Carson cites hundreds of sources, which runs over fifty pages. She treated each one as a piece of the puzzle, writes Steingraber. Woven together, they tell the big story. The science here reveals many unintended consequences. Carson upended the cultural narrative about science and nature.
New chemicals came home from the war as heroes. World War II ushered in the era of cancer-causing synthetic chemicals. Carson traces the rise of cancer through the early sixties. She was ahead of her time, Steingraber writes. Carson believed she saw early signs of a cancer epidemic. Research findings of the day began to show a link between pesticides and breast cancer.
The New Yorker serialized Silent Spring in three installments before the book published. Carson stood firm on the data in face of “withering and cruel attacks,” says Steingraber.
A sense of outrage and moral responsibility drove Carson to write Silent Spring. Despite enemies that the book made for her, “she persevered through strength of character and depth of commitment,” Steingraber concludes.
SILENT SPRING, the book itself, fills half the pages in this fine and interesting edition.
Rachel Carson opens with a fable. “A grim specter has crept upon us.”
Adjusting to the new chemicals would require time on the scale of nature, generations of human time. Instead of calling these “insecticides” and “herbicides,” we need to call them “biocides,” Carson advocates. How can we want to control a few unwanted species while contaminating the environment, she asks. It is “a train of disaster.”
DDT’s properties as an insecticide became known in the late thirties. It passes from one organism to another up the food chain, accumulating from alfalfa to hens’ eggs, for example.
Synthetic chemicals in large volume began in the forties, leading to “our unthinking bludgeoning of the landscape,” writes Carson.
And No Birds Sing, a chapter halfway in, includes a few stories from Milwaukee and Wisconsin.
In Whitefish Bay at least a thousand myrtle warblers migrated through the suburb on Lake Michigan, just north of Milwaukee. But observers spotted only two of the birds after spraying elms in the late fifties.
“DDT kills indiscriminately,” wrote Owen Gromme in a letter to The Milwaukee Journal. Gromme, bird curator at the Milwaukee Public Museum, reported that calls and letters increased about dead and dying birds after the spraying and fogging began in Wisconsin.
“Can anyone imagine anything so cheerless and dreary as a springtime without a robin’s song?” wrote another Wisconsin woman. And yet another wrote to The Journal that she dreaded the day when beautiful birds will die in her backyard.
Reports from around the world differed in detail while repeating the theme of dead wildlife after pesticides. By the fifties, researchers found DDT in mammal gonads.
We have been “slow to adopt a commonsense approach to the cancer problem,” wrote Carson. We are neglecting an opportunity to prevent although we pursue a cure, she observes.
A hundred years ago, scientists wondered if insects could become resistant to spray. By the fifties, resistance rose following the intense application of the new chemicals. True to Darwin's theory, spraying killed off the weak while the strong ones lived and bred.
The first medical use of modern insecticides occurred in Italy during World War II, a successful war on typhus by dusting many people with DDT. A two-hour program from two years ago https://www.pbs.org/video/american-ex... includes film clips of that dusting, which today seems cruel because of what we know now. This book pairs well with the video. It gives a great overview of Rachel Carson and Silent Spring but does not substitute for the book.
If insects can become resistant, what about humans? That would take hundred of years.
Carson closes with Robert Frost in mind. Two roads diverge, but they are not equal choices. The one “less traveled by” preserves the earth.
OTHER WRITINGS appears as a big section that I planned to skip. But these five dozen pieces read as pithier and more direct because most of them, mostly letters, were written for an audience of one, making it an essential part of this edition that captures her thoughts on the environment from the midforties to the midsixties. These entries reveal Carson’s evolving thought on how to tell the story:
Four years before Silent Spring published, Carson proposed an article about DDT spraying in a nine-paragraph letter to to E B White at The New Yorker. In reply, the magazine wanted fifty-thousand words in three installments.
In a letter to William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, Carson wanted to give primary attention to human health while framing the article about disturbances to all living things. She wanted to “build a really damning case against these chemicals as used against us.” No one knows yet what the effects of lifetime exposure will become, as she wrote to Shawn sixty years ago.
“To many of us, this sudden silence of the song of the birds, this obliteration of color and beauty and interest of bird life, is sufficient cause for sharp regret,” Carson wrote in a letter to The Washington Post.
Rachel Carson served on the Natural Resources Committee of the Democratic National Committee sixty years ago. Authorities, she wrote at the time, believe that humanity faces its greatest threat from the environment. She described the chemical contamination of the environment as “serious” with the primary source coming from insecticides and weed killers spread on “a massive scale” that distributes poisons over areas not intended as targets, thanks to wind and drift.
The spraying is self-defeating, wrote Carson to Paul Brooks, editor-in-chief at Houghton Mifflin, a year before publishing the book. Because the mosquitoes become resistant, the mosquito “gets the last laugh.” Brooks suggested the title for the book. He appears in an earlier video telling how he stood up to criticism of the book. https://shop.pbs.org/american-experie... The library holds this DVD.
Silent Spring published a couple of years later than Carson planned. The book generated letters from people who wanted the abuses to come under control. Meanwhile, the attacks on her used well-known techniques, such as discrediting Carson and misrepresenting her position.
In her last talk published here, Carson expressed her concern with “the reckless use of chemicals." The battle for a sane policy began before Silent Spring and will continue, she told the Garden Club of America.
THIS IS AN EXCELLENT deluxe quality edition. Well worth the time spent with it. I will read other books in this Library of America series.
AGENT ORANGE, also developed during World War II, used as an herbicide and defoliant in Vietnam. The VA presumes that Agent Orange causes prostate cancer among those of us exposed to it in Nam. I received my diagnosis this spring. This book lived on my to-read shelf for a long time. I wanted to read it before the Earth Day fiftieth. And now, since my diagnosis, I wanted to read it for what the book revealed about what we knew then about these chemicals before we sprayed twelve million gallons in Vietnam.
June 10, 2025
Rachel Carson is an absolute legend, and reading this book has only solidified my thoughts on sustainability and environmental change. Written a little over 60 years ago now, and this book is still relevant. Everyone needs to read this book, and remain educated on the aspect of human “control” of nature - or the fact that we have none. Transitioning to an age where humans work harmoniously with nature has yet to happen, but after reading this book I am still hopeful it will happen. We just need to listen to the scholars and learn from
their research, as Carson did all those years ago, and we can move into an era of environmental restoration.
their research, as Carson did all those years ago, and we can move into an era of environmental restoration.
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February 13, 2025Specifically logging this for the “and Other Environmental Writings” portion of the LoA book. The letters to Dorothy Freeman were really wonderful.
June 28, 2018
A relentlessly comprehensive documentation of the devastating effects of pesticides with DDT in particular, with the chapters subdivided among effects on water bodies, on soil, on plant life, on fish, on fowl, etc. I am pleasantly surprised that this book was so popular among the American audience and cast a long effect on the American psyche, so much so that the EPA and several wildlife protection laws occurred because of it. This book contains a lot of references to chemicals' formal names, and frankly long dry spells of science-speak worthy of a technical manual, and the fact that ordinary Americans triumphed over these obstacles to rank this book the most influential publication of the previous 50 years creates a pleasant generalization about them.
In contrast to other reviewers here I did not detect a moralistic or biblical reference underpinning Rachel Carson's interpretation of caretaking for the environment. In particular, she does not attempt to orchestrate a return to Eden, where man is completely hands-off. Instead, her main advocacy is: we can change and shape the environment without introducing toxic chemicals, by using biological agents and natural intrusions learned carefully from long years of ecological training, such as placing enemy plants or insects near the species we want to get rid of, or putting in microorganisms to kill the undesired species.
In contrast to other reviewers here I did not detect a moralistic or biblical reference underpinning Rachel Carson's interpretation of caretaking for the environment. In particular, she does not attempt to orchestrate a return to Eden, where man is completely hands-off. Instead, her main advocacy is: we can change and shape the environment without introducing toxic chemicals, by using biological agents and natural intrusions learned carefully from long years of ecological training, such as placing enemy plants or insects near the species we want to get rid of, or putting in microorganisms to kill the undesired species.
May 21, 2019
An absolutely stunning environmental classic that, for all its shortcomings exemplifies strengths that few if any following books could match - including campaigns to repeal permissions to almost all the chemicals Carson writes about, if not the myriads that chemical corporations would proliferate across the increasingly monopolistic agribusiness world. True, Carson's appeal to then-mainstream Americans tends to nostalgize about middle-class, small-town America; true too that her advocacy seems to have its limits, and that her understanding of genetics and disease could be enriched by further reading. All this granted, nothing is as good as diving into her lucid, impassioned, and highly focused writings to see the ways in which this amazing, intelligent woman worked so hard at changing not just her own behaviours, but those of her state and society. Here I include the letters as well as the text of Silent Spring, which do much to humanize "Ray" Carson while also indicating the amount of activity that went into preparing the ground for change - and then acting on those preparations.
Foundational.
Foundational.
July 25, 2018
This beautiful new edition from the Library of America is splendid. The battles for the health of the environment are still continuing, proving how important it is to be engaged. Carson was successful as a writer because she wrote so passionately about the natural world; she combined a wondrous sense of nature with great scientific curiosity. In a way, I am pleased that it took me so long to discover this book.
October 9, 2020
I listened to this book. It took me a bit of time to get used to the reader and in the end I liked her. This is a very "sciencey" book. I admit to skipping sections. I didn't understand everything but the main idea that I did understand is we have to stop using dangerous chemicals to kill pests. When we kill the pests, we kill the loved creatures also. When we spray to kill the pests, we are poisoning ourselves.
February 1, 2024
Silent Spring's only detriment is the passage of time, the relative redundancy of research which was once cutting edge and has since entered common parlance. Simultaneously, however, the haunting realization of how little our ecological practices have improved is stimulating & sobering. Carson's text is participatory, communicative without over-indulgence or reliance on slipshod prose.
July 13, 2025
Of course, Silent Spring is a foundational text of environmentalism, and everyone should read it. However, I also found that the latter half of this book - her letters and speeches - filled in extra context for me that I really appreciated. I feel like I have a better understanding of her life, and the main text is more meaningful to me as a result.
August 7, 2025
Whilst this book is nonfiction & very informative, it reads like a really good fiction book. I can see why Carson has had such a lasting impact on environmentalism & elsewhere. She really highlights the beauty of the natural world that God gave us.
November 15, 2018
Required reading.
August 12, 2022
A necessary read for any biologist, or any citizen of the natural world. Her warnings against pesticides still fail to be heeded and we continue to pay the costs. Just as needed now as it was then.
October 5, 2019
Interesting
July 16, 2024
I love stuff like this. I already knew about DDT so I docked a star and this specific edition had too much unnecessary things (at least for myself) but if you don’t know about this issue I’d recommend reading at least silent spring, it’s a great look into modern world history merged with equity, science and whisteblowing (Rachel Carson my queen )
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May 4, 2018632.9 C321o 2018
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews