Silent Spring continues to be worthy of our attention because it marks an important moment in history, just as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and John Muir's Our National Parks do. The examples and arguments it contains are timeless lessons of the land we need to reexamine. They are also timely, because the battle Rachel Carson helped to lead on behalf of the environment is far from won.
We are still poisoning the air and water and eroding the biosphere, albeit less so than if Rachel Carson had not written. Today we understand better than ever why we must press the effort to save the environment all the way home, true to the mind and spirit of the valiant author of Silent Spring.
Index
RACHEL CARSON (1907–1964) spent most of her professional life as a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By the late 1950s, she had written three lyrical, popular books about the sea, including the best-selling The Sea Around Us, and had become the most respected science writer in America. She completed Silent Spring against formidable personal odds and despite critical attacks that echoed the assault on Charles Darwin when he published The Origin of Species, and with it shaped a powerful social movement that has altered the course of history.
Despite the enormous impact of Silent Spring, Carson remained modest about her accomplishment; as she wrote to a friend, "The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been upper-most in my mind—that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done . . . Now I can believe I have at least helped a little."
Among the many honors and awards Carson received during her lifetime were the National Book Award, for The Sea Around Us (1951); a Guggenheim fellowship (1951–1952); the John Burroughs Medal (1952); the Henry G. Bryant Gold Medal (1952); the Women's National Book Association Constance Lindsay Skinner Award (1963); the Conservationist of the Year Award from the National Wildlife Federation (1963); and a Gold Medal from the New York Zoological Society (1963).
Rachel Carson lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, until her untimely death.
Also Available
COURAGE FOR THE EARTH:
WRITERS, SCIENTISTS, AND ACTIVISTS CELEBRATE
THE LIFE AND WRITING OF RACHEL CARSON
In this new collection, edited by Peter Matthiessen, a host of brilliant contributors share their thoughts on Rachel Carson's enduring legacy in the environmental movement. Contributors include Al Gore, John Hay, Freeman House, Linda Lear, Terry Tempest Williams, Edward O. Wilson, and others.
ISBN 13: 978-0-618-87276-3 / ISBN-IO: 0-618-87276-0
***
THE EDGE OF THE SEA
"Rachel Carson was first and foremost a writer of considerable
literary style whose true love was the sea."
—from the introduction by Sue Hubbell
While Rachel Carson is best known for Silent Spring, she had a deep passion for life in the ocean. In pellucid, knowledgeable prose, she transforms seemingly simple plants and animals at the sea's edge into complex and stunningly beautiful creatures deserving of our compassion, understanding, and finally, protection.
ISBN-13:978-0-395-92496-9 / ISBN-10: 0-395-92496-0
FROM MARINER BOOKS
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
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