Product Description

Edited and with an Introduction by Linda Lear

This trove of previously uncollected writings by the author of Silent Spring is a priceless addition to our knowledge of the great environmentalist and her life.

"[Carson's] writing still sparkles. . . . This book should be required reading."
-Bill Sharp, The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #190278 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com Review
In her lifetime, Rachel Carson published only four books. She was a careful writer and meticulous researcher, for one thing, and she worked as a government scientist until the success of books like Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us enabled her to turn to her own writing full-time. She also published several magazine pieces, many of which biographer Linda Lear gathers here, along with letters and journal entries. In one piece that is characteristic both of her modesty and of her wit, Carson remarks on her then-unusual status of being an "average-sized woman" and a scientist, one who had just become "a biographer of the sea." In another, Carson writes of the necessity of protecting shorelines from economic development that would hasten their erosion and subsequent destruction. Carson's many fans will take much pleasure in this anthology of her work. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
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.

From School Library Journal
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.

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Book
The book is a collection of Rachel Carson's discovered writing, but it isn't a simple collection of her essays. Thanks to the excellent editor, Linda Lear, all of the 31 essays are well organized in four parts, and each one begins with an editor's preamble that explains background, Carson's motivation, and other useful information for the specific essay. With those preambles and essays, I had a feeling as if I were reading Rachel Carson's biography as well. With her unique combination, a biologist with literary talent, Rachel Carson turned her deep love for nature to the marvelous essays that would be very valuable for human being as a part of nature. The same editor, Linda Lear, wrote Carson's biography (Rachel Carson : Witness for Nature), which I read a couple of months ago and found excellent. It also became one of my highly recommending books.