Craig Waddell presents essays investigating Rachel Carson’s influential 1962 book, Silent Spring. In his foreword, Paul Brooks, Carson’s editor at Houghton Mifflin, describes the process that resulted in Silent Spring. In an afterword, Linda Lear, Carson’s recent biographer, recalls the end of Carson’s life and outlines the attention that Carson’s book and Carson herself received from scholars and biographers, attention that focused so minutely on her life that it detracted from a focus on her work. The foreword by Brooks and the afterword by Lear frame this exploration within the context of Carson’s life and work.


Contributors are Edward P. J. Corbett, Carol B, Gartner, Cheryll Glotfelty, Randy Harris, M. Jimmie Killingsworth, Linda Lear, Ralph H. Lutts, Christine Oravec, Jacqueline S. Palmer, Markus J. Peterson, Tarla Rai Peterson, and Craig Waddell. Together, these essays explore Silent Spring’s effectiveness in conveying its disturbing message and the rhetorical strategies that helped create its wide influence.