But before we get into that, let's talk about Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring. Who was she exactly?
Rachel Carson grew up in the river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother gave her a life-long love of nature. Rachel expressed this as a writer and a student of marine biology. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.
She began a long career; fifteen years; as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
She wrote articles and brochures on natural resources and edited scientific articles. However she also wrote a great many books about the subject, such as Under the Sea-Wind (1941). In 1952 she published her study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books made her famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Carson quit her government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing.
She wrote many other articles made to teach people about the wonder of the world, including "Help Your Child to Wonder," (1956) and "Our Ever-Changing Shore" (1957). One of Carson's main points in her writing was that "human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly."
Angered by the use of faux chemical pesticides after WWII, Carson changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long-term effects of misusing pesticides.
In Silent Spring (1962) she poked at the practices of agricultural scientists and the government and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.
Carson and her book were attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as a crazy person, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are anot only causing but also subject to the same carnage as the world around us.
Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment.
Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer.
She continues to inspire many young people.
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