Silent Spring
Book Details
- Publisher : Penguin Books
- Published : September 2000
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 336
- Category :
Environmental Studies - Catalogue No : 96372
- ISBN 13 : 9780141184944
- ISBN 10 : 0141184949
Also by Rachel Carson
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Now recognized as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, Silent Spring exposed the destruction of wildlife through the widespread use of pesticides. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Despite condemnation in the press and heavy-handed attempts by the chemical industry to ban the book, Carson succeeded in creating a new public awareness of the environment which led to changes in government and inspired the ecological movement. It is thanks to this book, and the help of many environmentalists, that harmful pesticides such as DDT were banned from use in the US and countries around the world. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Lord Shackleton, a preface by World Wildlife Fund founder Julian Huxley, and an afterword by Carson's biographer Linda Lear.
Reviews and Endorsements
"If you had to choose one text by one person as the cornerstone of the conservation movement, the signal for politically savvy environmental activism, and the beacon of worldwide lay awareness of ecological systems, Silent Spring would be most people's clear choice. Its impact was immediate, far-reaching and ultimately life-enhancing: it earned her a posthumous presidential medal and put her face on the 17 cent US postage stamp...It is brilliantly written: clear, controlled and authoritative; with confident poetical flourishes that suddenly illuminate pages of cool exposition" - The Guardian.
About the Author(s)
Rachel Carson (1907-64) wanted to be a writer for as long as she could remember. Her first book, Under the Sea Wind, appeared in 1941. Silent Spring, which alerted the world to the dangers of the misuse of pesticides, was published in 1962. Carson's articles on natural history appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Reader's Digest and Holiday. An ardent ecologist and preservationist, Carson warned against the dumping of atomic waste at sea and predicted global warming. The Edge of the Sea, which completed her biography of the sea, is also published in Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Rachel Carson died of cancer at the age of 56.
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