RACHEL CARSON
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania, about 18 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Her home, known as the Rachel Carson Homestead, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is open for public and private tours. How did this open to a quiet studious young woman, daughter of an insurance salesman and a mother who inspired her with a love of nature? Although born and raised hundreds of miles inland, Carson early became fascinated with the ocean. She graduated from the Pennsylvania College for Women (A.B., 1929), then Johns Hopkins University (A.M., 1932), and did further graduate study a the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She considered herself a marine biologist, encompassing in her career zoology, general aquatic biology, and science writing. Her love of writing began as a child and became remarkably honed during a lifetime of productive work, winning fellowships and awards throughout her life, including the National Book Award in 1952.
Everything she wrote is in print. She is considered one of the most influential writers on ecology, public policy and the environment, and the human place within the biosphere. She had an extraordinary sensitivity to the beauty of nature — while simultaneously being solidly grounded in the dispassionate scientific understanding of the natural world. Her skill with words and her no-nonsense understanding of facts and relationships in the environment lent a power to her persuasion most notably in her last book, Silent Spring (1962), which brought about a dramatic redirection in the study of pesticides and their complex consequences.
Too many writers to mention were influenced by her confident ability to capture “the breath of science on the still glass of poetry,” as one critic described her prose. Loren Eiseley, Marianne Moore, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Lewis Thomas, John McPhee, Gary Snyder, Bernd Heinrich, Sy Montgomery — anyone who is compelled to write of the most basic and urgent issue, the survival of humanity on earth, must read Rachel Carson. She is not only a necessity, she is a pleasure and a revelation.
Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson
Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson
For environmentally critical times, Courage for the Earth is a centennial appreciation of Rachel Carson's brave life and transformative writing
Rachel Carson’s lyrical, popular books about the sea, including her best-selling The Sea Around Us, set a standard for nature writing. By the late 1950s, Carson was the most respected science writer in America.
She completed Silent Spring (1962) against formidable personal odds, and with it shaped a powerful social movement that has altered the course of history. In Silent Spring, Carson asserted that “the right of the citizen to be secure in his own home against the intrusion of poisons applied by other persons” must surely be a basic human right. She was the first to challenge the moral vacuity of a government that refused to take responsibility for or to acknowledge evidence of environmental damage.
In this volume, today’s foremost scientists and writers give compelling evidence that Carson’s transformative insights -- her courage for the earth -- are giving a new generation of activists the inspiration they need to move consumers, industry, and government to action.
Contributors include John Elder, Al Gore, John Hay, Freeman House, Linda Lear, Robert Michael Pyle, Janisse Ray, Sandra Steingraber, Terry Tempest Williams, and E. O. Wilson