BEGINNING OF ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT

CARSON, RACHEL.  Silent Spring

"As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life." - Rachel Carson

FIRST EDITION of Carson's enormously influential work, "credited with creating a worldwide awareness of the dangers of environmental pollution" (Britannica).

"Ever since 1945 when she tried unsuccessfully to interest Reader's Digest in publishing an article on the potential hazards of DDT use, Carson had been following the problem of pesticide pollution... Reluctantly concluding that no magazine would publish an article on such a distasteful subject as pesticide pollution, she embarked on a book... The result, Silent Spring (1962), was a powerful critique of the Cold War culture that condoned such crude and short-sighted tampering with the natural world. The book indicted the chemical industry, the government, and agribusiness for indiscriminately using pesticides without knowing more about their long-term effects... [It] caused a sensation. In clear, often beautiful prose Carson demonstrated that chemical pesticides were potential biocides that threatened humankind and nature with extinction. She used the impact of pesticides to illustrate that man, like other species, was a vulnerable part of the earth's ecosystem.

"Silent Spring caught the attention of President John F. Kennedy, who called for an investigation of the issues it raised. The 1963 report of a special panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee supported Carson's conclusions... The public responded by calling for state and federal regulation of pesticide control programs and the elimination of the use of some compounds. Carson was acclaimed by the public and received numerous scientific and literary awards, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters" (American National Biography).

New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket. Book fine, some edgewear and a few small abrasions to dust jacket. A difficult book to find in collectible condition. $750.