LOST WOODS: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson

A collection of excerpts from unpublished writings and speeches by the naturalist

YA-These brief excerpts from previously unpublished or uncollected writings provide YAs with samples of some of the most lyrical, clear scientific writing available in the fields of biology, ecology, and wildlife and wilderness conservation. A number of the excerpts included are from speeches Carson made before groups such as the Women's National Press Club. Each selection, whether letter, speech, or article, is preceded by a brief introduction that gives useful background information. The naturalist's struggle for financial security, her devotion to her work, and her fascination with the natural world are revealed both in her writing and in the editor's introductions. Lear also provides updates to Carson's writing where necessary, since much of this work was produced in the 1950s. Carson's call for wildlife conservation and preservation, her warnings about the dangers of pesticides, and about the need to preserve and protect our natural resources, however, are timeless.
Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

If fleeting sketches can sometimes say more than the fully realized work, this collection of journal entries, a TV script, speeches and articles by one of the pioneers of the modern environmental movement gracefully delivers. Pieces on the destruction of unique island eco-systems, the connection of music to nature and environmental "managed care" of waterfowl refuges offer sad testament to Carson's range, never to be further explored due to her early death from breast cancer, in 1964. Written with mesmeric intensity, Carson's first piece of published adult work, "Undersea," was accepted by the Atlantic in 1935. Reprinted here, it reveals her lasting obsession not only with the sea but with the antiquity and majestic continuity of life on earth. Her other famous passion, exposing the ravaging effects of pesticides, which was devastatingly depicted in her 1962 classic, Silent Spring, is defended here in a speech that marks the maturity of her voice. Highly informed and occasionally withering, this refutation of her big-business critics reveals the nasty arena she felt forced to enter. In other speeches, Carson, a trained biologist, laments the perceived distance between science and a language that can touch nonscientific people. For a TV script on the subject of clouds, she states, in a delicate synthesis of fact and poetry, "They are the writing of the wind on the sky." The careful gathering of fragments by Lear (author of the 1997 biography Rachel Carson), if presented a little too reverently, gives rare glimpses of Carson's personal vulnerability and of her strange fusion of restraint and fervor, offering a frequent sense of being in Carson's company.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Biographer Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, 1997) knits together here a number of Rachel Carson's writingsoften much more personal, quirky, and searching than her celebrated booksthat add meat to her body of literary/scientific writing. Carson published just four books during her lifetime, but she also cranked out speeches and articles and newspaper work, kept copious field notes, and wrote thousands of letters. Lear has selected from this material a chronological sampling as a guide to Carson's evolution as a writer and a natural scientist. Many of the pieces will be new to most readers, even if their toneof ``awakening an emotional response to nature''is trademark Carson. This collection includes pieces on Carson the hard-core birder: there are both field jottings and essays on chimney swifts and warblers and gulls, and a rapt couple of days on a hawk watch in Pennsylvania. She wrote liner notes to Debussy's La Mer, music which she comfortably interprets to jibe with her notion of the ocean's mysteries. She was certainly one of the first to give the importance of island biogeography more than a passing nod; an essay on the destruction of rare island habitats, and the extinction of island species, has been included by Lear. And her anxiety over atomic weapons, especially when byproducts are dumped in the oceans, is spelled out here in her preface to the second edition of The Sea Around Us. As always, touching all aspects of her work are her puzzlings over the simple fact of life and her druidic appreciation of natural cycles and the beauty, excitement, and inscrutable elements of the natural world. Carson devotees will already be familiar with some of this material; the more casual (if no less admiring) fan will find in this collection an engaging glimpse into the breadth of Carson's curiosity and the fashioning of her public voice as a defender of the environment. (5 b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

During the course of her research into Carson's life for her biography, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (1997), Lear discovered a wealth of unpublished writings. Not only was Carson a perfectionist when it came to style, and a zealous researcher, but she was breaking new scientific ground, attempting to educate the public in the complexities of ecology and voicing her deep and emotional concern over the destruction of natural environments. The upshot of all this is that Carson worked very slowly. She was burdened, too, by family responsibilities and the demands of her work as a federal government biologist and editor; as a result, her output was high in quality but not quantity, and her reputation has primarily been based on the tremendous impact of just two books, The Sea Around Us (1951) and Silent Spring (1962). It is a boon, then, as well as a quiet pleasure, to have access to the newspaper articles, essays, excerpted field journals, speeches, and letters Lear has rescued and guided into print. Donna Seaman