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Summary: Pure junk science. Disgusting
Review: To make a long story short, the EPA's own documentation and federal court finds that DDT is not harmful to humans. In addition, to prove his point, the president of a DDT manufacturer drank one pint of DDT with his lunch everyday for a year with no ill effects. In 1962, the number of cases of malaria in Africa had been widdled down to 15. Now there are 300 million cases reported each year of which about 6 million die.It turns out that DDT is indeed harmful to birds. However, it is meant to be used indoors and applied to walls where birds don't go.
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Summary: A Book Everyone Should Read Once.
Review: A lot has been written about this book and its importance to the environmental movement, etc. The book is worthy of most of this praise. I believe that this is one of the few books everyone should read at least once in their life.
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Summary: ddt
Review: landark book on dangers of ddt, insightful analysis
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Summary: Surprising!
Review: I didn't think that this book was very interesting and I didn't think that this book was very dull either. It made me think about some of the current issues of today that deal with pesticides. Rachel Carson talks about how insecticides are sprayed to kill insects, but they not only kill the target insects, but also those that no one wants to kill. Now, in present day, there have been sprayings to get ride of the mosquitoes carrying the West Nile Virus. I was wondering what other insects/animals we are killing. Even though the West Nile virus is a serious disease, it does not affect the majority of the population. Less then one percent! Is that enough to risk endangerment of hundreds of animals? Or even humans that will come in contact with the insecticides?
Also, she talks about how once pesticides are in the water; it is very hard to get rid of them. This reminded me of a present day issue about the "Frankinfish." They are putting pesticides into the water to try to rid this area of the fish, but are they thinking about the other animals that they are endangering? We are already destroying habitats of animals that we have not even discovered, why do we want to kill more?
All in all, this book made me wonder about how all of this is still relevant to life in the twenty-first century and what we can do to get the results that we want without using harsh chemicals.
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Summary: I actually liked it
Review: Usually when I read a book it never grabs me and I am usually very bored reading it. To my own surprise that was the very opposite in this book, to think that some of the things mentioned in this novel actually happened makes you think and definately grabs the readers attention. ...
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Summary: Review of Silent Spring
Review: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is an excellent book. Although Carson published the book over 30 years ago, its message about the dangers of pesticides and man's attempts to control nature are true today. Clearly an environmentalist, Carson presents a balanced picture of how pesticides contaminate our water, atmosphere, and food. For example, she examines how DDT used to control worms, ants, and grubs ultimately kills birds and other mammals and enters our streams and lakes from runoff and kills fish. She examines the history of Clear Lake, California, where scientists used a pesticide to destroy a small gnat that annoyed fishermen. The pesticide was later found in birds, fish and larger predators. Scientists discovered that initial small doses of the insecticide increases as it is consumed along the food chain and that as waters are contaminated with pesticides, there is a danger that cancer-producing substances are being introduced, too.
While Carson accepts some limited pesticide use, she fully supports biological solutions which she feels can be used to control unwanted insect and plant populations without compromising our health. For example, she points out that in California, scientists brought in two species of beetle to control the unwanted Klamath weed. She uses our fight against the Japanese beetle as another support for biological solutions to unwanted insects. In the East, scientists used an imported parasitic wasp and the milky spore disease to wipe out the Japanese beetle. In Michigan and Illinois, scientists dusted with aldrin and dieldrin to control the beetle. The pesticides only endangered birds, rabbits, muskrats, fish and people and did not solve the Japanese beetle problem. Carson notes that insects are becoming resistant to pesticides and that nature, not man, is the best control of unwanted pests.
While her book was attacked and discredited by the pesticide industry, her findings have been confirmed and today environmental issues are a major national concern. The book is easy to read and contains excellent examples and explanations of the interrelationships in nature. Anyone who is interested in the environment should read this book.
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Summary: "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. "
Review: Edward Abbey, a well-known author and environmental activist, once said, "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul". Carson obviously felt similarly, and expressed her extreme passion for nature, the earth, living things, and the environment in her compelling book, Silent Spring. Carson was one who would not remain silent, or go without action. She boldly alerted the public to the poisons and dangers we are dispersing into the world. Carson's writing reveals her concern for everything that has been done to the earth, and will be done in the future. However, it also shows the hope that someday instead of pouring chemicals deemed intolerable and poisonous for humans by the FDA into our environment, natural and safer solutions will be sought and widely used for the same reasons. This book served as both a wonderful, thought-provoking read, as well as a terrible realization. I enjoyed how with each page I read, a myriad of questions arose forcing the reader to think about the distinctions between animals and man, the interconnected web of life, the silent and deadly killers eating away at the environment, and how we let it get this far. Despite the fact that this book was written in the early 1960's, it still teaches several valuble lessons to every reader. Since that time many advances in methodology, technology, and science have been made to alleviate many of the problems discussed in this book, but the damage has been done. Much of the environment will never be the same, and it's important to understand why. What is more powerful than a book to inform the unaware! Being born far after the time when the book was released, and the environmental movement began, this book has been a key tool in helping me to understand man's capacity to poison, kill, and destroy, as well as his amazing capability to understand, learn, help, teach, and try to change and fix what has been done.
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Summary: Lies and misinformation, yet solid writing style
Review: I recently read Slient Spring and it had its downs and its up (only one of them)
Some infomartion that Carson used to show the effects of DDT on bird eggs were misleading and others were outright lies. Some of the lies she wrote were bogus numbers of deaths and even the "effects" that DDT had. If we had DDT today, I doubt that there would be West Nile in the effect that it is today or Malaria would be as powerful as it is now in Third World nations.
The one plus side of Silent Spring was that it had solid writing. The words and "information" flowed easily onto paper.
So in the end Silent Spring is a good example of how to write, but not how to do research.
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Summary: Outdated
Review: First of all, this book may have been an eye opener when it came out, but this book is outdated. We have new technology that allows us to rid ourselves of certain pests that we did not have in the 1950's and 1960's. With new methods we have created new problems and eliminated a few of the old ones. Books should be recomended that discuss current problems rather than outdated ones. Although this book was a pioneer in alerting the country of environmental hazards it overexagerates situations to unrealistic levels. It does however suggest a few natural ways to rid communities and farms of certain insects. All in all, I was informed of a few new things that opened my eyes, but like I said, they are problems that are now mostly in the past.
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Summary: don't be mislead by reader from June 18, 2002
Review: Thanks to Racheal Carson for an important book. The guy below who wrote: "Please! Don't be mislead., June 18, 2002" is obviously a selfish republican. Well, prove me wrong! I'm sure he is! Poison the earth for our own selfish benefit, use it's resources until it's dry, and who gives a damn about the millions of other species inhabiting this planet and the planet itself. All that matters is us Humans. I'm so sick of this self-centered egotistical attitude I could spit (at people like him)!
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