“Silent Spring” is as groundbreaking controversial and relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1962. It’s strange to read “Silent Spring” after more than 50 years from its publication in a handsome new edition from the America library .
Now it seems like a dispatch from a disappeared world in large part because of “Silent Spring”.
Carson’s book appeared first in serialized form in the New Yorker in June 1962, drawing much attention from other media and a promise by then-former president ”Kennedy” to investigate the claims in this book. A few weeks after Kennedy’s promise, the book itself came out.
The book jumped to the best-seller book list and stayed there for months, selling more than 600,000 copies in it’s first six months.
'Silent Spring by Rachel Carson'
The text includes strong accusations against the chemical industry and a call to look at how the use of chemicals can cause damage and impact the world around us. ”Carson” successfully demonstrates the fragility of the biopersity on the planet and emphasises how chemical use can have a large repercussions?.
The book argues that uncontrolled and unexamined pesticide kills not only animals and birds, but also humans.
”Silent Spring” is remembered as an attack on ”DDT” specifically, but Carson actually wrote about many products, presenting evidence that industrial bug- and weed-killers could upset entire ecosystems.
The losses from this wholesale drenching of the landscape with chemicals could be irrecoverable, she warned, as these substances totally outside the limits of biologic experience killed not only their target species but many other creatures as well beneficial insects, birds, small mammals and all aquatic.
Carson said: “For the first time in the history of the world every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.”
She added, Yet “Silent Spring” is more than a condemnation of industry it’s a condemnation of a thoughtless culture that would destroy the world for one dollar.
“Silent Spring” is typically taken as the summit of Carson’s career, but it’s an earlier essay, “Help Your Child to Wonder”, included in the Library of America edition.
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