Volume 41, Number 16 · October 6, 1994
Greens in America
By Daniel J. Kevles
The House of Life: Rachel Carson at Work, with Selections from Her Writings
by Paul Brooks
Houghton Mifflin, 350 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Twenty-fifth anniversary edition
Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson
Houghton Mifflin, 368 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement
by Robert Gottlieb
Island Press, 413 pp., $27.50
The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism
by Charles T. Rubin
Free Press, 312 pp., $22.95
The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement, 1962-1992
by Kirkpatrick Sale
Hill and Wang, 124 pp., $7.95 (paper)
A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement
by Philip Shabecoff
Hill and Wang, 352 pp., $10.95 (paper)
Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement
by Susan Zakin
Viking, 483 pp., $23.50
Rachel Carson died thirty years ago this past April, two years after the publication of Silent Spring, her path-breaking account of the myriad ways that pesticides, particularly DDT, were damaging the natural environment and threatening human health. Much of the book, now reissued in an anniversary edition, is devoted to explaining technical subjects such as the intricate interaction of chemical compounds like dieldrin with physiological and ecological phenomena; yet it is written with passion and a poetic sensibility, and it shows eloquent concern for the human stakes in a chemically uncorrupted nature. Serialized in The New Yorker, Silent Spring captured enormous public attention, was a best seller for months, and was quickly translated into twelve foreign languages.
Review, 6587 words
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