CARSON, Rachel.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Silent Spring. First edition, first printing, of Carson's indictment of the pesticide industry. It was of enormous consequence to the grassroots environmental movement, the deep ecology movement, and the rise of ecofeminism.Carson, a nature writer and editor-in-chief for the Fish and Wildlife Service, had long been concerned about the widespread use of DDT and other pesticides, but lack of interest from magazine publishers led her to put aside her idea for an exposé. When the book finally appeared in 1962, only a year before her death, its great strength was not in presenting new information - most of the data she included was already known to the scientific community - but in making the information accessible to non-scientists and instilling a sense of fear and urgency in the public. Not merely an indictment of DDT, her book challenged the foundations of post-war modernity and forced humans to reconsider their relationship to the world around them.

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