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| Silent Spring (Edition 001) | 
| Author: Rachel Carson
Creators: Edward O. Wilson, Linda Lear
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $1.00
You Save: $13.95 (93%)
New (69) Collectible (7) from $5.08
Avg. Customer Rating:  137 reviews
Sales Rank: 4510
Format: Special Edition
Media: Paperback
Edition: 104
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0618249060
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.7384
UPC: 046442249065
EAN: 9780618249060
ASIN: 0618249060
Publication Date: October 22, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Over 600,000 Feedbacks Posted!!! Great Buy!!!*** Never Used*** May Have a Publisher's Mark~We have over 3,500,000 Books Sold!!!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Why should I read this book? April 17, 2006
7 out of 12 found this review helpful
Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" was the impetus that brought about the environmental movement as we know it today. Her unparalleled research, during 1962, exposed and condemned the use of DDT and ADT as forms of chemical pesticides and insecticides. The book provides shocking evidence and anecdotes of the affects of contamination, which often lead to death. Her stories and evidence was shocking because it not only opened the eyes of millions Americans to the carcinogens they were eating daily, but it opened up an entirely different area of environmental science. No long was it limited to preservation, such as the Sierra Club, but now the idea that humans have a negative impact on the environment.
I believe Carson wrote this book as a wake up call to the American Public. After observing a "Silent Spring", in which no birds chirped or bugs buzzed, she dug deeper into the extent at which these chemicals were being used. She was compelled to do research and write this book because she wanted people to know what havoc these chemicals were having on the earth.
If you are interested in environmental science I feel this book is a great tool for learning where environmental history begins, a lot of it begins with this book. If Carson hadn't written this book, then the use of DDT and ADT would still be in effect today. That thought alone would provide us with a much different future, in both a negative and positive light, because while DDT and ADT were bad, we have to this day, not found equivalent replacements that are as effective.
 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.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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