• Complain

Rachel Carson - Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition

Here you can read online Rachel Carson - Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: Boston, year: 2002, publisher: Mariner Books, genre: Non-fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Rachel Carson Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition
  • Book:
    Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Mariner Books
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2002
  • City:
    Boston
  • ISBN:
    978-0618253050
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carsons watershed book with a new introduction by the author and activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new afterword by the acclaimed Rachel Carson biographer Linda Lear, who tells the story of Carsons courageous defense of her truths in the face of ruthless assault from the chemical industry in the year following the publication of Silent Spring and before her untimely death in 1964. Silent Spring Times 100 Most Influential People of the Century

Rachel Carson: author's other books


Who wrote Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Rachel Carson

SILENT SPRING

Fortieth Anniversary Edition

Introduction by Linda Lear

Afterword by Edward O. Wilson

To Albert Schweitzer

who said

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

The sedge is witherd from the lake, And no birds sing.

KEATS

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.

E. B. WHITE
Authors Note I HAVE NOT WISHED to burden the text with footnotes but I - photo 1

Authors Note

I HAVE NOT WISHED to burden the text with footnotes but I realize that many of my readers will wish to pursue some of the subjects discussed. I have therefore included a list of my principal sources of information, arranged by chapter and page, in an appendix which will be found at the back of the book.

B.C.

Acknowledgments

IN A LETTER written in January 1958, Olga Owens Huckins told me of her own bitter experience of a small world made lifeless, and so brought my attention sharply back to a problem with which I had long been concerned. I then realized I must write this book.

During the years since then I have received help and encouragement from so many people that it is not possible to name them all here. Those who have freely shared with me the fruits of many years experience and study represent a wide variety of government agencies in this and other countries, many universities and research institutions, and many professions. To all of them I express my deepest thanks for time and thought so generously given.

In addition my special gratitude goes to those who took time to read portions of the manuscript and to offer comment and criticism based on their own expert knowledge. Although the final responsibility for the accuracy and validity of the text is mine, I could not have completed the book without the generous help of these specialists: L. G. Bartholomew, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic, John J. Biesele of the University of Texas, A.W.A. Brown of the University of Western Ontario, Morton S. Biskind, M.D., of Westport, Connecticut, C. J. Briejr of the Plant Protection Service in Holland, Clarence Cottam of the Rob and Bessie Welder Wildlife Foundation, George Crile, Jr., M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic, Frank Egler of Norfolk, Connecticut, Malcolm M. Hargraves, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic, W. C. Hueper, M.D., of the National Cancer Institute, C. J. Kerswill of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Olaus Murie of the Wilderness Society, A. D. Pickett of the Canada Department of Agriculture, Thomas G. Scott of the Illinois Natural History Survey, Charence Tarzwell of the Taft Sanitary Engineering Center, and George J. Wallace of Michigan State University.

Every writer of a book based on many diverse facts owes much to the skill and helpfulness of librarians. I owe such a debt to many, but especially to Ida K.Johnston of the Department of the Interior Library and to Thelma Robinson of the Library of the National Institutes of Health.

As my editor, Paul Brooks has given steadfast encouragement over the years and has cheerfully accommodated his plans to postponements and delays. For this, and for his skilled editorial judgment, I am everlastingly grateful.

I have had capable and devoted assistance in the enormous task of library research from Dorothy Algire, Jeanne Davis, and Bette Haney Duff. And I could not possibly have completed the task, under circumstances sometimes difficult, except for the faithful help of my housekeeper, Ida Sprow.

Finally, I must acknowledge our vast indebtedness to a host of people, many of them unknown to me personally, who have nevertheless made the writing of this book seem worthwhile. These are the people who first spoke out against the reckless and irresponsible poisoning of the world that man shares with all other creatures, and who are even now fighting the thousands of small battles that in the end will bring victory for sanity and common sense in our accommodation to the world that surrounds us.

RACHEL CARSON

Introduction

by Linda Lear

HEADLINES IN THE New York Times in July 1962 captured the national sentiment: Silent Spring is now noisy summer. In the few months between the New Yorkers serialization of Silent Spring in June and its publication in book form that September, Rachel Carsons alarm touched off a national debate on the use of chemical pesticides, the responsibility of science, and the limits of technological progress. When Carson died barely eighteen months later in the spring of 1964, at the age of fifty-six, she had set in motion a course of events that would result in a ban on the domestic production of DDT and the creation of a grass-roots movement demanding protection of the environment through state and federal regulation. Carsons writing initiated a transformation in the relationship between humans and the natural world and stirred an awakening of public environmental consciousness.

It is hard to remember the cultural climate that greeted Silent Spring and to understand the fury that was launched against its quietly determined author. Carsons thesis that we were subjecting ourselves to slow poisoning by the misuse of chemical pesticides that polluted the environment may seem like common currency now, but in 1962 Silent Spring contained the kernel of social revolution. Carson wrote at a time of new affluence and intense social conformity. The cold war, with its climate of suspicion and intolerance, was at its zenith. The chemical industry, one of the chief beneficiaries of postwar technology, was also one of the chief authors of the nations prosperity. DDT enabled the conquest of insect pests in agriculture and of ancient insect-borne disease just as surely as the atomic bomb destroyed Americas military enemies and dramatically altered the balance of power between humans and nature. The public endowed chemists, at work in their starched white coats in remote laboratories, with almost divine wisdom. The results of their labors were gilded with the presumption of beneficence. In postwar America, science was god, and science was male.

Carson was an outsider who had never been part of the scientific establishment, first because she was a woman but also because her chosen field, biology, was held in low esteem in the nuclear age. Her career path was nontraditional; she had no academic affiliation, no institutional voice. She deliberately wrote for the public rather than for a narrow scientific audience. For anyone else, such independence would have been an enormous detriment. But by the time Silent Spring was published, Carsons outsider status had become a distinct advantage. As the science establishment would discover, it was impossible to dismiss her.

Rachel Carson first discovered nature in the company of her mother, a devotee of the nature study movement. She wandered the banks of the Allegheny River in the pristine village of Springdale, Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh, observing the wildlife and plants around her and particularly curious about the habits of birds.

Her childhood, though isolated by poverty and family turmoil, was not lonely. She loved to read and displayed an obvious talent for writing, publishing her first story in a childrens literary magazine at the age of ten. By the time she entered Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College), she had read widely in the English Romantic tradition and had articulated a personal sense of mission, her vision splendid. A dynamic female zoology professor expanded her intellectual horizons by urging her to take the daring step of majoring in biology rather than English. In doing so, Carson discovered that science not only engaged her mind but gave her something to write about. She decided to pursue a career in science, aware that in the 1930s there were few opportunities for women.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition»

Look at similar books to Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition»

Discussion, reviews of the book Silent Spring: 40th Anniversary Edition and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.