I've re-read this after maybe 30 years & it is still scary. It is a classic environmental book, detailing how we're changing our ecology & poisoning it. How long the effects linger is just scary & the links to cancer is horrifying. She occasionally goes over the top, but most often makes good points on how our current practices of bludgeoning nature into our ideal form - which is often mistaken - is not working well & will eventually spell our doom. It was written over 45 years ago &, while a little dated, is still one of the best books I've read on the subject. It's amazing that we are still using some of the chemicals she shows so much evidence against using. Her well documented atrocities that our government has perpetrated against us are chilling. I never trusted the government all that much but trust them even less now. ( )

The book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1962. Rachel Carson was already a well known author of nature books and her book The Sea around Us, which came out in 1951, had spent 86 weeks on best seller’s lists. She won numerous awards for The Sea around Us including the National Book Award for nonfiction. Ms. Carson worked for many years as a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in addition to embarking upon a very successful literary career in the natural sciences. Her work in the field and her easy reading style made her a trusted source for information about our natural world so it was a bombshell for many when her book Silent Spring came out.
In Silent Spring Rachel Carson imagines a world in which spring is unnaturally silent because of the pesticides and herbicides then in use killing off the wild life, including birds with their beautiful songs, hence the silence of spring. She informs the reader that such a scenario is not so far off and begins to document incident after incident where the use of dangerous chemicals has harmed the wildlife in our environment. The meticulous research involved in documenting the harm done by pesticides and other dangerous chemicals, especially DDT, is overwhelming and one can appreciate why the chemical industry tried to go after and discredit Rachel Carson. Moreover, she then documents that if these killing chemicals are harming the wildlife then they are certainly harming us as well.
She documents the increase in cancer and traces it back to the overuse of pesticides, herbicides and other dangerous chemicals. Any pesticide, herbicide, or fungicide is a biocide she argues, if it kills life than it is killing us slowly but surely. At that time she states that cancer will become an epidemic and strike one out of every four people living if the wholesale use of pesticides and herbicides are not used more wisely if not banned outright. She documents how cancer can take decades to develop and that repeated small exposures to these dangerous chemicals disrupts cellular processes. Appreciatively, she writes in such a way that the layman can understand these complex biological functions. Ms. Carson argues forcefully that we ought to be working to prevent cancer from occurring as well as fighting for a cure. Instead, she points out, the medical establishment works upon fighting cancer once it has appeared rather than prevention. Unfortunately, not much has changed concerning cancer prevention verses cancer treatment. She herself died of breast cancer two years later after Silent Spring was released. For now it is a sad fact that one out of two men will have cancer in his lifetime and one out of every three women will so it is much worse than she predicted back in 1962.
One of the original reviews by The New York Times gave it a glowing recommendation but the reviews by the chemical industry were not so favorable which is not surprising given that her book strikes at the hand that feeds them. Many of the reviews by the chemical industry were sexist and patronizing in the extreme. However, the public overwhelmingly endorsed Ms. Carson’s recommendations.
Silent Spring has been credited with beginning the environmental movement in the United States. So powerfully did the book argue against the use of chemicals to control the natural world that DDT was eventually banned for use in the United States. Although there are portions of the book where the science is outdated, because of the impact this book has had upon our nation’s use of pesticides such as DDT and because it was an impetus for the environmental movement in this country, the title deserves to remain upon the shelf at public libraries. ( )

Picked up this book having heard it was a landmark piece of literature in the ecological movement. Worth a read, but it's a sad book and in some chapters the author does labour the point a bit. In context of time written, a well-researched and quite frankly bold piece of work! Fact that it is still referred to 40 years on proves its significance. ( )

well i guess she could just write 'ddt kills' and have said the same thing; so repetitive, but apparently necessary at the time ( )

I read this book this summer. It was good, but sort of depressing! ( )