"Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson - A Journey of Self-Discovery and Spiritual Enlightenment.

Amazon Customer: Classic book on use of pesticides, their destructive qualities and the preservation of our wildlife. Cover is really nice. Honorable product that I’m sure Rachel Carson would appreciate.

United States on Jul 31, 2023

John Townend: This book helped bring the world’s attention to thr over use of herbicides and pesticides which persisted in the soil damaging wildlife and others.

United States on Jul 28, 2023

TJ: This book highlights the humanistic belief that we alone can decide which creatures are allowed to exist by using our "superior"knowledge of biological, chemical and dermatological sciences. The 1950/60's scientists and food producers have a lot to answer for. Excellent eye-opener, thought provoking read.

United Kingdom on Jun 27, 2023

Dr. Jochen Robert Moehr: This ian incredibly well informed and superbly written book about our mistreatment of the earth and its dire consequences. Published in 1962, all the deplorable consequences that we now live in were foretold. A must read for everyone concerned about biodiversity and why it is necessary if we hope to be able to continue to live on this earth - our only one!

Canada on May 01, 2023

Dennis Ilin Chang: I wish the publisher can spell check before they publish. It’s obvious that they scan the text to convert to digital format. Unfortunately the scan software changed all doubt L into single L. All became Al, and finally became final y. And no proof reading before publishing. I wonder if the publisher can correct it and send me the revised ebook?
Other than that, it’s a very good environmental horror story of how chemical industry used chemical weapons to wipe out insects and later found out nature doesn’t work this way. Much like fox and rabbits exist in harmony and in a balanced food chain. New generation of chemical resistant insects can be born within days, humans on the other hand will take 100 years to generate 3~4 generations. We will therefore suffer more from chemical attacks on the environment more than the insects.

United States on Apr 23, 2023

Libby: This is a fantastic book and although some of the issues it raises have been dealt with, it still has a great deal to see about the use of hazardous chemicals which may slowly poison us but which we tolerate because we believe will help us produce cheap food. Whoever converted the book into electronic text missed the fact that all the double Ls have been deleted.

United Kingdom on Mar 27, 2023

Alex Marsh: Rachel Carson, and others, recognised the damage we are doing to our planet with chemicals - whose purpose is to control nature. Ho is it we are still making the same mistakes seventy years later? How many chemicals do you contact every day? At home, at work, in the restaurant? How many of these chemicals are actually damaging your body, perhaps triggering cancers?
How will you try to find out? Who will you ask? Certainly not the manufacturers!
Think on - who is profiting from your potential ill health?

United Kingdom on Feb 15, 2023

Chongyean Cheang: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is one book that has opened our minds to how much has gone wrong in the world. It is an immensely powerful scientific book for general readers packed full of verifiable research and data. Rachel Carson wrote the book about the widespread use of chemical pesticides that have wreaked havoc upon the water, the atmosphere, the soil, and the earth since the experiments conducted during World War II. Carson begins the book with a short chapter containing an imaginary scenario of a quiet American countryside in spring devoid of birds and other wildlife. Carson then asks a question which the book attempts to answer: "What has already silenced the voices of spring in many towns in America?" (Carson 1962) The other sixteen chapters fully detail how the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides impacts the environment and silences living species when people do not pay attention. In chapter two she makes the point that humans can alter nature. "The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea" (Carson 1962). The author demonstrates that people try to get a quick fix for their small problems but are...

United States on Feb 12, 2018

Ian Robertson: What is most surprising - and impressive - about Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, which effectively kicked off the public environmental movement, is that it is still current, still relevant, and still a powerful call to action. Carson did for the environment movement what Jane Jacobs did for urban planning - gave voice, visibility, structure, and enduring direction to a core issue of modern society.

First published to wide acclaim and readership in serial format in the New Yorker magazine, Silent Spring was quickly reissued in book format. Carson was both an expert in her field (masters degree in zoology; decades of field work) and a seasoned writer (editor-in-chief of the US Fish & Wildlife Department publications; author of several books), but perhaps because she was an outsider to academia (female, non-university employed), she wrote for a general audience. Though it is rich with scientific detail, it can be easily followed by any reader.

The book consists of 17 short chapters, and befitting its serialized origin, each is concise, focussed on a particular issue, well researched and referenced, and rationally argued. For example, in chapter two Carson...

Canada on Apr 24, 2017

Tom Connor: What follows is an unpublished paper I did with Dr. of entomology J. Gordon Edwards in the early 90s. We put a lot of time into it, and it deals with facts, not the innuendo Carson ascribes to. I've deleted the intro, which is unrelated to carson's book.

As I neared the middle of the book, the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts and was also deliberately wording many sentences in such a way as to make them imply certain things without actually saying them. She was carefully omitting everything that failed to support her thesis that pesticides were bad, that industry was bad, and that any scientists who did not support her views were bad. So I started over, notepad in hand, listing errors that I confirmed in other documents. Here's that work:

Dedication: A Lie
Dedication. In the front of the book, Carson dedicates Silent Spring as follows: “To Albert Schweitzer who said ‘Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the Earth.’”

This appears to indicate that the great man opposed the use of insecticides. However, in his autobiography Schweitzer writes, on page 262:...

United States on Apr 26, 2015