Silent Spring: Rachel Carson (Penguin Modern Classics)

Now recognized as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, Silent Spring exposed the destruction of wildlife through the widespread use of pesticides

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Despite condemnation in the press and heavy-handed attempts by the chemical industry to ban the book, Carson succeeded in creating a new public awareness of the environment which led to changes in government and inspired the ecological movement. It is thanks to this book, and the help of many environmentalists, that harmful pesticides such as DDT were banned from use in the US and countries around the world.

This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Lord Shackleton, a preface by World Wildlife Fund founder Julian Huxley, and an afterword by Carson's biographer Linda Lear.

Rachel Carson (1907-1964) spent most of her professional life as a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By the late 1950s, she had written three lyrical, popular books about the sea, including the best-selling The Sea Around Us. An ardent ecologist and preservationist, Carson warned against the dumping of atomic waste at sea and predicted global warming. Silent Spring, which alerted the world to the dangers of the misuse of pesticides, was written against formidable personal odds. With its publication in 1962, Carson shaped a powerful social movement that has altered the course of history.