Rachel Carson and Her Sisters
Extraordinary Women Who Have Shaped America's Environment
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- 22,99 €
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- 22,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
An inspiring portrait of the lives and achievements of American women environmental writers and advocates from 1850 to the present.
In Rachel Carson and Her Sisters, Robert K. Musil redefines the achievements and legacy of environmental pioneer and scientist Rachel Carson, linking her work to a wide network of American women activists and writers and introducing her to a new, contemporary audience. Rachel Carson was the first American to combine two longstanding, but separate strands of American environmentalism—the love of nature and a concern for human health. Widely known for her 1962 best-seller, Silent Spring, Carson is today often perceived as a solitary “great woman,” whose work single-handedly launched a modern environmental movement. But as Musil demonstrates, Carson’s life’s work drew upon and was supported by already existing movements, many led by women, in conservation and public health.
On the fiftieth anniversary of her death, this book helps underscore Carson’s enduring environmental legacy and brings to life the achievements of women writers and advocates, such as Ellen Swallow Richards, Dr. Alice Hamilton, Terry Tempest Williams, Sandra Steingraber, Devra Davis, and Theo Colborn, all of whom overcame obstacles to build and lead the modern American environmental movement.
ROBERT K. MUSIL is President and CEO of The Rachel Carson Council, Inc., senior fellow at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, American University, and author of Hope for a Heated Planet. He is the former CEO of the Nobel Peace Prize–winning Physicians for Social Responsibility and an award-winning journalist.
"An eloquent and moving tribute to the women at the heart and soul of the environmental movement. It is a story of brilliant science, courage, stamina, and a passion for life. We are in debt beyond counting to them and to Robert Musil for telling their stories so well." –David W. Orr, Oberlin College
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Musil (Hope for a Heated Planet) offers a valuable history of noteworthy female American environmentalists, though readers will have to first make it through a cringe-worthy explanation of his discovery that many women have played crucial roles in raising awareness of environmental issues. The book's most important contribution is its emphasis on the accomplishments of figures like nature writer Florence Merriam Bailey, ecology pioneer Ellen Swallow Richards, and naturalist/activist Terry Tempest Williams. They are Carson's intellectual sisters, and Musil presents them in chronological order, beginning with the 19th-century's first popular nature writer, Susan Fenimore Cooper. The careers of the women presented in the first two chapters are dutifully linked to Carson's accomplishments, though readers unfamiliar with the Silent Spring author have to wait until the third chapter for a cohesive discussion of her career. The book's second half focuses on Carson's successors. In addition to Williams, there is Sandra Steingraber, who investigated the link between pesticides and cancer, and Devra Davis, who made feminist analyses of industrial pollution. Musil's work comes alive in this second half, his choices of influential female environmentalists more assured and better connected to Carson and her work. The book is odd and uneven, but with enough quirks to make the reading worthwhile. Illus.
