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Summary: It's a text book for a science class.
Review: I read Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring for my science class. As I slowly dragged through each chapter, I found the book to be interesting and very informative. However, I also found it hard to read. I constantly had to put the book down and reach for my dictionary to look up words. The length of the book is another flaw. Silent Spring did not need to be 17 chapters long. She could have gotten her point across in less chapters.
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Summary: Very important for those with environmental concerns
Review: This book is crucial for those who have any interest in environmental health and biology and I would highly recommend it for those people. However, the book can be dull at times. If you muddle through those parts, it gets better. The last chapter, on alternatives to chemical control of pests and weeds, is the most interesting and practical. Another problem with the book is that Rachel Carson often uses overly sensational wording to convey the threat from widespread use of chemicals. She was clearly on a mission. The final flaw I found with the book is some logical errors in her arguments. If you can overlook those relatively minor points, it is very worth reading. The book is extremely well researched and provides a wealth of information. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: wonderful insight into the dangers of playing with nature
Review: This book opened my eyes to a world of "icides" (pesticiedes, herbicides, etc.)that I now know I had only marginal knowledge of. The damage on our own race as well as to the earth that supports us only shows our disconnectedness from the land on which we live. To realize we (the US) treated these new chemicals and technology with such fleeting thoughts and without significant study truly makes one wonder about emerging technologies of today, and what types of unseen impacts we will find down the road. Certainly we have learned from our past....we hope. But as the saying goes: history is bound to reapeat itself, if not in exactness, certainly in concept. I have recently ordered "Silent Spring Revisited" in hopes of seeing the resulting regulatory and policy changes that Carsons book invoked.
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Summary: Do you have it in you to pick up where Carson left off?
Review: Rachel Carson did a job for society, a job that required many hours of research and thinking. It is not a matter of thanking her, but a matter of what we should do now, now that we have the knowledge that something is deeply wrong with our insecticide use. The one daunting realization that comes to mind when talking about action in a field like this, is that one either needs to be overly zealous to save the environment--for whoever decides to take up the environmentalism battle will face many obstacles--or one needs to be connected (e.g., be the president or vice president). The next thought is just how hard it will be to find one’s way around all the lies, and all the bribes and corruption that will surely find the person who gets up high enough to make changes. Thank you Rachel Carson
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Summary: This is one of the most important writings of this century.
Review: After reading this book I fully realized the tremendous scale of insectiside use worldwide. I shudder to think what our world would be like without works like this. This information would be totally unavailable to me without this book. I strongly suggest this to anyone interested in ecology.
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Summary: A work of global importance
Review: Some books so pervade the American consciousness that its easy to feel you know them well without reading a single page. Silent Spring is such a book. Its name has been bandied about so frequently for so long, its easy to assume there's nothing new to learn from it. That assumption is mistaken. Its no great exaggeration to say that this book reshaped the American landscape and, eventually, the world. There is a reason: Silent Spring is lucid, eloquent and powerful. If the information is somewhat dated, the inspiration isn't. Read this book.
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Summary: Still a long way to go
Review: It's ironic, significant and scary. Within the same week, Rachel Carson's original article, published in '62 by The New Yorker, was chosen by NYU as this century's second best piece of reporting journalism ever; and, at the same time, in a UN-sponsored convention on biodiversity held at Cartagena, Colombia, the US delegation bombarded the possibility of a protocol being even drafted that would impose limitations on the worldwide spread of transgenics, the '90's best friend & companion to the pesticides the, alas, late (she passed away in 1964) Ms. Carson denounced. It only goes to show how hard the environment-aware movements still have to keep on struggling, and how powerful are the forces of death. And that's only the tip of the iceberg: read up on the proposed Multinational Investment Agreement, it will knock your socks off. But the voices Ms. Carson helped raise won't be hushed. Couple o' days ago, Monsanto (co-developer, together with the US Department of Agriculture, of the "terminator" gene read up on that one, too), withdrew their request for their transgenic soy to be produced in a commercial scale down here in Brazil. That's one we won, for the time being at least, but don't let it fool you. It is, perhaps more than ever, an uphill battle but keep on pushing -, and one that owes much to Rachel Carson's foresight and courage.
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Summary: Go Rachel!
Review: Thank you so so much, Ms. Carson! It is you who began the movement to clean our air and water. Any evaluation different from that is ignorance. Ignoring the argument that "the Earth's ecosystem is not fragile," something said only by the most ignorant, we are still in dire need of reform to use of chemicals. Biocides ("pesticides") are still killing our world.
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Summary: Another title could have been "Man's Arrogance"
Review: This book has been justly acclaimed for 35 years. It is a primer for environmental awareness, and finer words than these have been written in praise of this book. But there are two things I have noticed in this book that I have not seen mentioned. One is the implied conclusion we have to make about the condition of man, and his folly. His often ignorant and worse, arrogant manner of interacting with nature and other men. The often less than honorable relationship between the federal government and big business, without whom these lessons hard learned on the hazards of insecticides would probably not have been necessary. What impressed me so was the way that people continued to use these harmful products after obvious hazard to themselves and nature by being convinced by the government that it was safe to do so. They were so trusting and so wrong. Their belief that they could alter nature to suit their needs indefinitely speaks of their ignorance. The other point I would like to make is that I found Ms. Carson's prose to be nearly as delightful as poetry. Her writing style is beautiful, refined, and yet her intellect and strength of character shine through. While the topic of this book is profoundly disturbing, Ms. Carson's writing made it curiously pleasant. It is easy to read, and still a relevant topic after so many years. I will be anxious to read the follow-up books on this subject.
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Summary: Great book that opens your heart and mind to the environment
Review: Rachel Carson opens your mind and heart to the misuse of chemicals and how it effects everyone and everything. This book is truly a treasure that everyone should read, not just people concerned with the environment. Very similar to Silent Spring is Don Hutchins', Walking by day, which outlines problems with the environment and how these issues are handled.
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