Rachel Carson
Witness for Nature
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The authoritative biography of the marine biologist and nature writer whose book Silent Spring inspired the global environmentalist movement.
In a career that spanned from civil service to unlikely literary celebrity, Rachel Carson became one of the world’s seminal leaders in conservation. The 1962 publication of her book Silent Spring was a watershed event that led to the banning of DDT and launched the modern environmental movement.
Growing up in poverty on a tiny Allegheny River farm, Carson attended the Pennsylvania College for Women on a scholarship. There, she studied science and writing before taking a job with the newly emerging Fish and Wildlife Service. In this definitive biography, Linda Lear traces the evolution of Carson’s private, professional, and public lives, from the origins of her dedication to natural science to her invaluable service as a brilliant, if reluctant, reformer.
Drawing on unprecedented access to sources and interviews, Lear masterfully explores the roots of Carson’s powerful connection to the natural world, crafting a “fine portrait of the environmentalist as a human being” (Smithsonian).
“Impressively researched and eminently readable . . . Compelling, not just for Carson devotees but for anyone concerned about the environment.” —People
“[A] combination of meticulous scholarship and thoughtful, often poignant, writing.” —Science
“A sweeping, analytic, first-class biography of Rachel Carson.” —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Those who know Carson (1907-1964) only as the author of Silent Spring, which raised America's consciousness about the environment and in particular about the negative effects of pesticides, will come away from this comprehensive biography not just with a deeper awareness of what made this woman tick but also with a more thorough understanding of how America's environmental policies evolved. Relying on Carson's extensive letters and on exhaustive interviews with various friends and colleagues, Lear, a research professor of environmental history at George Washington University, traces Carson's life in the most minute detail. We are flies on the wall as Carson, the youngest by far of three children, has her first experiences with nature under the careful tutelage of her mother. We watch as she struggles to overcome gender and social barriers--Carson spent much of her life, until her mid-life literary successes, either poor or the struggling breadwinner for poor relatives--to follow her real passion, writing. We stand by as she finds love and solace later in life in the friendship of a married woman, Dorothy Freeman. It is a story that is at once inspirational and poignant. Carson's was no easy life, but she persevered, driven by a need to write and to illuminate the miraculous natural world to just plain folks. It is impossible to read of her trials and tribulations without being moved. Photos not seen by PW.
