It has been said that in only five books, Rachel Carson set a standard for nature writing for all time. She managed to combine the fruits of detailed fieldwork and precise observations with a flowing style.
Rachel Carson had a scrupulous respect for truth and remarkable personal courage. She checked and rechecked her facts; she wrote and rewrote. She found a way of pursuing both of her passions...marine biology and writing.
Under the Sea Wind
This was Rachel Carson's first published book and was always one of her favourites. It provides a portrait of sea birds and sea creatures of the eastern coast of North America, dramatizing the ecological relationships revealed in the lifecycles of a pair of sanderlings, a young mackeral and an eel. It is a classic wilderness adventure narrative that holds the attention of all ages.
'Under the Sea Wind' was published one month before the bombing of Pearl Harbour which led to disappointing sales. However, after the phenomenal success of 'The Sea Around Us', Carson's first book was re-published and ended up on the New York Times Bestseller list for a while and is still in print.
[ Order this title from P'lovers for $19.00 CDN ]
|
|
The Sea Around Us
This book captures the mystery and allure of the ocean with a compelling blend of imagination and expertise. This book sold over one million copies, stayed on the best-seller list for more than eighty weeks, was translated into 32 languages, inspired an Academy Award-winning documentary, and earned Rachel Carson the John Burroughs Medal for an outstanding book of natural history and the National Book Award for nonfiction.
Carson wrote her first two books while working for the US Fish & Wildlife Services. She was one of the first of two women to work in positions higher than a clerical job. Carson's salary, after her father died, was needed to support her ailing mother, a sister who died leaving Carson to care for her two nieces, and then, when one of the nieces died, Carson adopted this woman's son, Roger. The success of 'The Sea Around Us' allowed her to write full-time and buy a property on the ocean.
[ Order this title from P'lovers for $23.95 CDN ]
|
|
The Edge of the Sea
Using her special blend of poetry and science, Rachel Carson describes the rocky shores, sandy beaches and coral reefs at the edge of the sea. Dazzling the reader with such facts as the tiny periwinkle having 3500 teeth, Carson invites readers to share in the mystery and magic found where the ocean meets the land. Like all her books, this books is still in print and still as relevant now as it was when first published.
[ Order this title from P'lovers for $22.95 CDN ]
|
|
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson dedicated 'Silent Spring' to Albert Schweitzer who aid "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth." At the outset of the book, she also quotes E.B.White who said "I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival is we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially." These quotes sum up the spirit and central message of this groundbreaking book, a landmark in 20th century non-fiction.
While Rachel Carson much preferred writing about her central passion, the sea, she was driven to write 'Silent Spring' because of her deep concern about the effects of the unlimited use of pesticides on all living things. The more she researched the facts that form the foundation of this book, the more frightened she became. She was able to express her concern with the calm precision of her scientific mind and her usual passionate eloquence.
It has been said that this single book changed the course of history. There were strident reactions to it...chemical companies launched campaigns to dismiss Carson as both a person and a writer; and the general public cried out with enormous support. President Kennedy established an expert panel to review the book's findings which ultimately validated everything Carson had written which led to not only an indictment of the chemical companies and the bureaucratic indifference of government but also to the banning of DDT and revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water.
Almost every sentence of this book is worth quoting and so what follows is merely a single random sampling...
"The most alarming of man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues if for the most part irreversible...chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and, through the alchemy of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure well."
At the same time Rachel Carson wrote this book and had to deal with all the public demands on her time following its publication, she was in poor health as she fought her own private battle with breast cancer. In spite of feeling fatigued and unwell, she appeared on a CBS documentary in March 1963...she concluded her remarks saying "We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself....I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves."
Sadly, even though her book led to a number of positive changes in laws and regulations, mankind had not really heeded the warnings in 'Silent Spring'. By 1992, for example, in North America, 8 pounds of pesticide per person were being used...pesticide use on farms alone had to over 1 billion tons a year.
[ Order this title from P'lovers for $22.95 CDN ]
|
|
The Sense of Wonder
Rachel Carson originally wrote the text that appears in this book as a magazine article in Women's Home Companion entitled "Help Your Child to Wonder",1956. The book edition was first published in 1965, a year after her death. This current edition is enhanced by beautiful and perfectly relevant photographs by Nick Kelsh. The introduction is by Linda Lear who wrote the extensive biography: 'Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature' (Henry Holt, 1997)
'The Sense of Wonder' was inspired by Carson's intimate adventures in nature with her young nephew, Roger. She says "it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil." This book inspires the use of all the senses in appreciating and reveling in the beauty of nature. She ends by saying "The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of the earth, sea and sky and their amazing life."
[ Order this title from P'lovers for $29.00 CDN ]
|
|
|
