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| Silent Spring (Perennial Bestseller Collection) | 
| Author: Rachel Carson
Publisher: G. K. Hall & Company
Category: Book
Buy Used: $24.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  136 reviews
Sales Rank: 2439282
Format: Large Print
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 437
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 6.8 x 1
ISBN: 0783880537
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.7384
EAN: 9780783880532
ASIN: 0783880537
Publication Date: March 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Book is in standard used condition. Thousands of satisfied customers!
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| Customer Reviews:
 DDT case study a "fraud" March 20, 2006
14 out of 20 found this review helpful
It's been several years since I've read "Silent Spring," one of the most significant environmental books ever written, but I must respond to the posting by "seem," which is titled "murderous, over the top propaganda" (I correctly your misspelling of the last word): His recommendation to read "DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud" was put out by the Heartland Institute and is, in itself, a "fraud." The Heartland Institute is one of the most pro-chemical, pro-industry, anti-environmental and right-wing organizations around. Nothing they put out should be believed for a second.
 Pesimistic, but Worth It February 28, 2006
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book is a pessimisitic, unflattering view of pesticides and their effects on the world. Rachel Carson seems to drone for a long time about how man is killing the world, only submitting to a positive approach on 15 out of the 300 pages. Despite this overriding negative tone, the book has some very clear strengths. The book activily explores the interlocking connections of our world, connecting life, to soil, to air, to water, and all of them together. She explains those connections by the transfer of pesticides through the environment and food chains, but that concept transfers outside of pesticides too.
Although this book may have some exceedingly pesismistic points to it, it does have historical value, and some strong scientific value.
 Silent Spring Review February 27, 2006
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is good in its factual reference Although it is very informative, to some it may seem boring. This book is very long and almost too informative. Overall it is good because it shows the actual harms of the different insecticides on human and animal populations. Also it is a good way to inform people of the long term effects of these harmful chemicals.
A classic for good reasons February 12, 2006
18 out of 21 found this review helpful
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson (40th Anniversary Edition)
It was finally time for me to pick up the book that is often credited with inspiring or starting the modern environmental movement. I'd heard of Silent Spring many times from environmental speakers and had seen it referenced in The Ecology of Commerce and in Megatrends 2010 (see other reviews). The title has lost nothing of its timeliness or relevance with the passage of more than 40 years since its first printing. To that point, First Mariner Books published a 40th Anniversary Edition with introduction and afterword by Linda Lear and Edward O. Wilson, respectively, that place the book and author in historical context and give credit for the impact both have had on our world.
I want to first of all give the author praise for being much more balanced and far-seeing in her thinking than any of the detractors whose reviews I've read on Amazon would hint at. The main charge post-humously leveled is that rampant unthinking DDT (or worse) use would have saved lives lost to malaria had it not been for one woman writing a slanderous attack on the petrochem industry whose only apparent reason for being is to improve life. Rachel Carson's prose may have been very eloquent, pursuasive and moving but she was not advocating an extreme or unthinking position. Whereas she may have been extremely passionate about the need to make changes in the spray away mindset of the day, she did not call for throwing away what science could contribute to public health and well-being or even economic productivity. Quite the contrary, based on an ecological mindset and a commitment to understand nature and work with her, Carson encouraged exploring biologically wise means to control pests that thrive in a bio-defense impoverished monoculture. She cited figures and facts on successful pioneering integrated pest management programs and made a cost-benefit analysis that set the balance right.
I may have majored in Economics, but I'll gladly take my science from scientists like Rachel Carson rather than the PR department of a chemical firm with a vested interest in selling a "silver bullet" that has to be reapplied year after year in greater amounts. Carson makes an ironclad case for the dangers of bioaccumulation of toxins in the food chain (yeah and guess who's at the top), the ill-targetted dispersal methods, insect resistance due to extremely short reproduction cycles and the mutagenic qualities of many of the new wave of pesticides. She lays out her arguments in such clear language and with sufficient analogies and background that a layman can easily follow and be more conversant in the concepts of the subject matter. The other criticism of the book by detractors' reviews is that there are "too many facts" referenced in it - I don't think these readers have any sense for the time period that Rachel Carson was writing in and the need for a woman, an outsider, to make damn sure that she lined up all the facts she could behind her case so as to not just be dismissed ad hominem when raising concern about how the men in the white coats were wisley dragging us down the wrong path.
What's with all the wingnuts claiming that Carson is responsible for millions of malaria deaths by banning DDT? Nice Limbaughesque talking point, but as often, WAY OFF TARGET. The main thrust of the book is against agricultural pesticides where the damage caused by the target pest is economically less significant than the collateral damage of control efforts to the environment and human well-being. The reference to mosquito control in the actual book these buffoons claim to be reviewing is 1). a warning on mosquito resistance, 2). risk of wiping out the mosquitos natural predators with indiscrimminate control strategies (Nissan Island WWII), 3).exploring other more targetted control measures such as ultrasound.
Horribly misunderstood January 2, 2006
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
I love this book. Mostly because of its beauty and poignancy in its ability to make true science and ecology accessible to the average reader.
Unfortunantly, this book has also been used, and misused, by both sides of the environmentalist movement to justify there rather flawed beliefs.
You see, because of the wide ban of DDT, the death rate of malaria has grown tremendously over the past 40+ years. The reason is because uninformed individuals misunderstand the purpose behind the book. Carson's concern was the use of DDT for AGRICULTURAL purposes, NOT health care purposes.
Unfortunantly, social conservatives have used this rather unfortunante and tragic mistake from the environmentalist movement as ammo against the environmentalist movement as a whole, using a gross and unfair generalization that is just as tragic as the millions who have died from malaria due to the irresponsible and uninformed DDT regulations in our country.
Be smart, be open minded, be knowledgeable, and THEN read this book, and its true purpose and beauty will eventually come to you quite easily, and you will be informed.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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