Silent Spring

First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . [It is] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, for Time"s 100 Most Influential People of the Century).This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson"s watershed book with a new introduction by the author and activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new afterword by the acclaimed Rachel Carson biographer Linda Lear, who tells the story of Carson"s courageous defense of her truths in the face of ruthless assault from the chemical industry in the year following the publication of Silent Spring and before her untimely death in 1964.

Rachel Carson (1907-1964) spent a good deal of her professional life as a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Edward O. Wilson is the author of two Pulitzer Prize-winning books Linda Lear is the author of Rachel Carson: The Life of the Author of Silent Spring.

Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction by Linda Lear x
1 a fable for tomorrow 1
2 the obligation to endure 5
3 elixirs of death 15
4 surface waters and underground seas 39
5 realms of the soil 53
6 earth’s green mantle 63
7 needless havoc 85
8 and no birds sing 103
9 rivers of death 129
10 indiscriminately from the skies 154
11 beyond the dreams of the borgias 173
12 the human price 187
13 through a narrow window 199
14 one in every four 219
15 nature fights back 245
16 the rumblings of an avalanche 262
17 the other road 277
List of Principal Sources 301
Afterword by Edward O. Wilson 357
Index 365