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Summary: Please! Don't be mislead.
Review: Would you believe the case could be made that this book is responsible for as many deaths as Hitler or Stalin were responsible for? It is quite a claim but there are millions of people in third world countries, primarily Africa, dying of malaria every year. These deaths could cheaply and easily be nearly eliminated by spraying homes with DDT. This book led to the banning of DDT and was based on a good deal of bad research methods. You don't have to take my word for it. Check out JunkScience.com, fightingmaliria, TechCentral, or event the Wall Street Journal. JunkScience.com gives many details of the troubles with the research that went into this book regarding DDT and how effective it is and nowhere near as harmful as this book would lead you to believe. We don't see all these MILLIONS of people dying on the nightly news so many people are quite apathetic. Using DDT only in homes would save millions of lives a year. It wouldn't even have to be used for agriculture.
The enviro-fascists have a lot of blood on their hands in this case.
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Summary: Can't praise it enough...
Review: What can I say? Well... brilliant, excellent - & important - for starters. This book is not a book you borrow from the library, this is a book you set aside [price] for & you own. Quite simply: it's an essential read. If you have [price] to spare don't spend it on cigarettes, candy, cosmetics, or anything other non-essentials/luxuries you regularly indulge in, this once spend the money on a copy of this book. Or buy it for someone else. It is fantastic.
And join a grassroots, non-government, environmental organization!
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Summary: Silent Spring : Scientific view
Review: For those of the reviewers who claim how much human lives are saved by using DDT, why don't you consider some disvantages from using DDT too? Aren't human beings are so self-interested. Though using DDT might save millions of people and create more (good looking) food, it threatens many faunas and might eventually be harmful to human in a long term. "Silent Spring" was written 4 decades ago so there might not be many scientific researches related to the use of DDT at the time. Never theless, consider the bald eagle, they are endangered right now due to the thinning of eggs, caused by accumulation of the pesticide. The problem is still present, even though DDT is banned since 1972 in the United States. Pesticide might also be harmful to useful insects-that means, the pollinators can be killed, less fertilization, and the fruit production might actually decrease compare to when the pesticide is not used and other methods are used to control pests. Other natural substances can be used as substitute. For malaria problem, will it be better to try to find a new method to control mosquitoes than keep saying that DDT is the best and we shall not stop using it? Long evolution creates a way that balance the ecosystem itself: malaria-resistance trait is highly present where more malaria breaks out. Moreover, there are many natural ways that can help to prevent the problem, but they just might be less convenience than DDT. We just have learn how to. Long term effect of DDT might not be so wonderful as you thought. As a reviewer says that DDT does not persist long in the environment and 92% of DDT in a closed container degraded within a month, you didn't really tell what it degrades into. DDT can be degraded into DDD and DDE, which are still found in sediment cores (at least from the Hudson River where I actually study the sediment). DDD and DDE are still harmful, though slighly less than the DDT itself. I look up some research papers and still found the same thing I used to understand: DDT DO accumulate through the food chain.
For the claim that numbers of bird was increasing from 1941 to 1962 because of the use of DDT, I'm wondering what area the information is representing. With my knowledge, increasing number of species are recognized each year due to more interest in discovering species and new technologies that help in finding and comparing species. Thus, the number of species recorded at one year from a large area might not truly represent the number of species that exists in that area. The higher crops yeild might not benefit carnivorous birds since their food (insects) is lower. Also, the higher crops yeild with more birds eating the seeds, wouldn't that eventually damage the crops (less food for human)? Though the "Silent Spring" might contain some errors and does not refer to any new researches (because it might be impossible for RC to do so in 1960s), people should still consider to read this classic book and increase the awareness in doing anything. With our knowledge at this point, many evidences support that human beings have done so many negative impact on this planet without knowing at the time or without consideration that we are a part of the planet. For example, it took decades for us to know that the wonderful chemical CFCs in the past are very harmful the ozone layer. Every unit in the ecosystem is also important and has a reason be to here and we should respect them all.
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Summary: Just As True In Our 21st Century!
Review: This is the definitive book about ecological issues. Sadly it is just as applicable today as it was almost three decades ago when it was written, except that there are even more eco-problems facing our ravaged world such as global warming, the Ozone Hole, high UV-radiation, increased industrial and automobile pollution etc. We obviously did not pay enough heed to Rachel Carson's sound caveats! Could it be that Silent Spring is too information oriented for our entertainment seeking 21st Century world? If so, maybe another book just recently published, entitled, ACCUSED BY FACET-EYES (by scientist-author, C.B. Don) might help to bridge this gap as there is an interesting tie-in with Silent Spring. In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson mentions the devastating effects of pesticides sprayed on orchards and the decimated honeybee pollinator colonies...essential for our agriculture! "Accused By Facet-Eyes" takes Silent Spring one step further. It is a well researched contemporary science-fiction eco-novel, which presents a fantastic, thought-provoking storyline through "honeybee facet-eyes". I am a long-time fan of Silent Spring and yet I loved this new, imaginative eco-novel. Both books share a strong ecological message presented in different ways. Silent Spring and "Accused By Facet-Eyes" are rare eco-books, both truly worthwhile reading and reflecting upon!
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Summary: THE CLASSIC THAT STARTED IT ALL
Review: I have just finished reading the 1962 printing of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring". Ms. Carson draws our attention to the effects of pesticides on all tiers of life-forms. It is the book that made the American people aware of what our Department of Agriculture and the Department of Forestry were doing to destroy life as we know it in this country. Carson writes in an easy-to-understand language that readers at the high-school level will get, and I urge ALL high-school students to read this! "Silent Spring" will have you running for the Organically Grown food section of your grocery store the next time you shop!
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Summary: 30 million dead -- thanks, Rachel
Review: Do I have your attention? "Silent Spring" represents the basest sort of non-intellectual, politically self-serving, pseudo-science ever foisted upon the American public. The vehicle for persuasion is emotional. What little science is involved is speculative and irrelevant in the greater context of quality-of-life issues for human beings. That fact should be abundantly clear to anyone with proper academic credentials. In others words, none of the other reviewers. The inclusion of Al Gore's name on the book condemns it. "Earth in the Balance" is a political tract completely bereft of scientific value and full of blatant lies. In the past forty years over thirty million souls have been lost to malaria alone. Desperately poor people eking out an existence in the world's backwaters, the vast majority of whom could have been spared agonizing debilitation and death by the prudent use of DDT or other pesticides, with little harm to the environment. Rachel Carson is the small, flawed messiah of the environmentalists. A movement which have amply demonstrated their concern for plants and animals by their flagrant contempt for their fellow man.
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Summary: Silent Spring APES
Review: The novel made the reader aware of the dangers of incecticides and pesticides by detailing the destruction the poisons cause. Extensive research and direct quotes made the points more effective. Also, the way the chapters were seperated helped to focus on more specific points at a time. Too much of reading it at once could become redundant as many of the topics related to eachother. The parts that were too scientific became hard to focus on, but when human examples were used it regained its sense of importance. After reading the book you can not disagree with the fact that humans should not attempt to control nature.
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Summary: Wrong then and wrong now...
Review: Rachel Carson forgets to mention the huge benefits that pesticides have brought the world and massively overplays their supposed downside. Even the hated DDT has almost certainly saved millions of lives by helping to eradicate malaria in many parts of the now developed world. Pesticide use has resulted in a far higher fruit yield than would otherwise have been possible allowing more people to eat more fruit - and as everyone knows, fruit contains many anti-cancer substances. Set against this, the slight cancer risks caused by using pesticides,if there are any at all, are more than worth paying.
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Summary: Silent Spring Review
Review: Silent Spring is a book that has been read by many people and is written by Rachel Carson. In this book she writes about the disturbances that had been created in nature, and almost all of them created by humans. The use of pesticides has been a terrible damage to animals, plants, and even persons, as a result, in the time where this was seriously happening, like about in the 1960's, there was a huge decline in some of out beautiness of our nature, as birds and other animals that ineract with each other. Rachel Carson wrote this book so everybody could see how those pesticides or chemicals were destroying our environment and for people to realize what we need to think before we destroy our place, and for companies to rebuild an idea of what they're making. Silent Spring talks about an specific pesticide that was the first originated and that caused a lot of damage, panic, and troubleness among people and species, that was the use od DDT, this was a phenomenom that wasn't easily to get rid off and to fins s solution to the long effects that caused, such as the different diseases in persons, etc. I think that Silent Spring is an interesting book that students in high school should read, if interested, to realize what were the views over 30 years ago, and that we now can still see them, of the damage in the environment and the species in general.
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Summary: the world we live on
Review: When I first read the title of this book, I though about a little girl that would play in this huge garden and a boy who would be in love with her, but as I started to read it, I discovered that my perception was entirely wrong. Silent Spring is one of the most amazing books I have ever read, and I can imagine how the people that lived during the time it was published (1950's), reacted to Rachel Carson's work. This book deals with a big problem that will chase humanity for some time, the problem of hazardous chemicals used as pesticides. Rachel Carson tells us the atrocities that DDT, organophosphates, and other chemicals have done to our environment and our bodies. Rachel Carson explains in her book the composition of these chemicals and the way they affect us. How we continue poisoning the earth and our food. I had never thought of the ecology before or the conservation of our species, but this book changed my view of seeing things.
The warning that Rachel Carson give us in this book is to re-considerate in every step we take, and start thinking for one time only in ourselves. To see the world that surrounds us and learn to live with it. To admire and thank God for the singing of a bird, and to live with the security that we will be able to continue living.
This is a book every person should read so that the world can start making conscience and worrying about the world we live on. Even though it was written some years ago, it is really important and still concern us. We are driving in a very fast highway towards a cliff and unless we slow down, we will not be able to stop ourselves from destroying the life in this planet. This is the best book that describes the horrible effects of mankind's unconsciousness and careless, in the field of chemicals and biology.
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