She had expected an attack on its content by representatives of the chemical industry and their political allies, but not the kind of virulence and personal animosity that materialized. In June 1962, The New Yorker published the first of three excerpts from her book, and Houghton Mifflin brought out Silent Spring itself in September. She suggested alternatives and called for intensive research into the effects of these chemicals on all forms of life, including humans. She pointed out the failures to grasp biological principles that encouraged the spread of deadly chemicals through the open environment and described the resulting fiascoes and disasters. In style and content, she designed her book to reveal to the public the misuse of those poisons. Yet, with her science background, she stepped in and labored for four years documenting how chemicals were destroying birds, fish, and other wildlife and tracking the mounting evidence of their long-term threats to living things. White, to take on the task of spreading the bad tidings.Ĭarson was already suffering from the cancer that would kill her. A very private person, she was reluctant to speak out and, in fact, urged several other persuasive writers, including E. As the author of several beautifully written and highly acclaimed books about the sea, she was probably the best-known science writer in the world.īut by the late 1950s, Carson had grown uneasy about the poisoning of land and sea by the massive and indiscriminate post-war barrage of new pesticides against gypsy moths, cotton boll weevils, and other pest insects. She had been a marine biologist employed by what is now the U. Carson, I knew, was an unlikely target of controversy. Several years after her death in 1964, her editor at Houghton Mifflin asked me to bring the history of the book’s publication up to date, and my work appeared in 1970 under the sibilant title, Since Silent Spring. I came to Carson’s book from a special angle. Rachel Carson was the first female biologist ever hired at the U.S.

Rachel carson author