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Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring.
- Title
- Silent Spring
- Author
- Carson, Rachel L.
- Introduction
- Gore, Al (1994)
- Publisher
- Houghton Mifflin Co., New York
- Year
- 1962
- ISBN
- 0395683297 (Paperback)
- Illustrations
- Darling, Lois and Louis
- Table of Contents
- Contents
- Bibliography
- List of Principle Sources
- Index
- Index
- Pages
- 368
- Categories
- nature, pesticides, environment, biology, pollution, conservation, science, ecology, toxicology, wildlife, insect pests
- Language
- English (en)
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- My Summary
- This book is mainly about how man is poisoning his own environment and usesthe example of pesticides.
It is well-researched and informative, scientifically correct but easily readable.
It hasn't lost any of its importance in the last 30 years because man is still mesmerized by the possibility that one can subdue nature by brute force rather than work with her. The only difference is that now one is not looked upon as some kind of crazy nut when one tries to further the cause of alternative or integrated pest management.
Highly recommendable.
But don't buy it if you only want to see what Al Gore has to say; he doesn't say much of importance in this book.
Buy Earth in the Balance instead.
- From the Book Cover
- Rarely does a single book alter the course of history, but Rachel Carson's Silent Spring did exactly that.
The outcry that followed its publication in 1962 forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water.
Carson's passionate concern for the future of our planet reverberated powerfully throughout the world, and her eloquent book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.
It is without question one of the landmark books of the twentieth century.
Silent Spring served as a touchstone for Al Gore while he was working on his widely praised, beststelling book on the environment, Earth in the Balance.
Now Rachel Carson's message is more important than ever, and no one is more qualified than Al Gore to introduce her classic book to a new generation of readers.
- From the Introduction by Vice President Al Gore
- Silent Spring came as a cry in the wilderness, a deeply felt, thoroughly researched, and brilliantly written argument that changed the course of history.
Without this book, the environmental movement might have been long delayed or never have developed at all.
- Summary from Amazon.com
- Silent Spring, released in 1962, offered the first shattering look at widespread ecological degradation and touched off an environmental awareness that still exists.
Rachel Carson's book focused on the poisons from insecticides, weed killers and other common products as well as the use of sprays in agriculture, a practice which led to dangerous chemicals to the food source.
Carson argued that those chemicals were more dangerous than radiation and that for the first time in history, humans were exposed to chemicals that stayed in their systems from birth to death.
Presented with thorough documentation, the book opened more than a few eyes about the dangers of the modern world and stands today as a landmark work.
- Summary from Bookpages
- Focuses on the effects of the indiscriminate use of chemicals, describing how pesticides and insecticides are applied almost universally to farms, forests, gardens and homes with scant regard to the contamination of the environment and the destruction of wildlife.
- The New York Times Book Review, Lorus Milne and Margery Milne
- Her book is a cry to the reading public to help curb private and public programs which by use of poisons will end by destroying life on earth....
Miss Carson, with the fervor of an Ezekiel, is trying to save nature and mankind...
- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Prudence Hockley
- Silent Spring, one of the first calls for public awareness and environmental action and a seminal work of the 1960s, examines the way dangerous chemicals have been used without sufficient research or regard for their potential to harm wildlife, water, soil, and humans, creating a sinister chain of poisoning and death.
Silent Spring is meticulously researched and accessible to the lay reader; its message is as clear as it is devastating: humans have willfully disturbed the whole web of life, the "intimate and essential relations" between the earth and all its passengers, animate and inanimate.
Rachel Carson's work is informed by an appreciation of the intricate beauty of a flourishing environment, her sorrow over what has already been irrevocably changed or lost, and her sense that humankind is immeasurably diminished by heedlessness and aggression.
Thirty years after it was first published, this landmark study is still eloquent, chilling, and, regrettably, timely.
Also a portrait of corporate greed and the arrogance and irresponsibility of control agencies and individual specialists, Silent Spring speaks out against the way in which a single species, gifted with ingenuity and intelligence, has misused its power to assault the integrity of the environment.
An elegy to a world once perfectly in balance, it is a heartfelt call for imagination, care, and humility, as we move to pre-empt our own destruction and find a way to live harmoniously in our natural world.
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- No longer available (but if you send me an e-mail message, I'll try to find you a used copy):
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 Paperback, 320 pages, Penguin, 1965, ISBN 0140022686
- Reprint Edition, Paperback, 368 pages, Houghton Mifflin, 1994, ISBN 0395683297
- Turtleback, Rebound by Demco Media, 1994, ISBN 0606056009
- Other works by same author
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- Related Links
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Audio cassette, Durkin Hayes Publishing Ltd, 1987