Nature’s Bookshelf: ‘Silent Spring’

Nick DeMott
2 min readJun 2, 2020
Image Source: Pexels.com

I’ll be honest: I didn’t finish reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1964).

You see, I’ve wanted to start this project for a few months — to come up with and ultimately discuss the best books that relate, somewhat broadly, to Nature. (Consider it a bookshelf that I figure the natural world would be proud of.)

Silent Spring seemed like the ideal starting point.

Carson’s landmark book is often considered a beginning for modern environmentalism. Crack it open for the first time and the problems addressed may not seem so distant…

Specifically, and as most of us likely know, the book focuses on the rampant use of pesticides, which rose dramatically after World War II, and which killed so much of the natural world — plants, animals and humans alike.

Something that’s really great (not actually great, but great in the way Carson approaches environmental destruction as a writer) about Silent Spring is how simultaneously specific and universal Carson presents these issues to be.

Carson gets into the nitty-gritty, the hard scientific facts and truth-telling about DDT and other pesticidal poisons. At the same time, we’re introduced to ideas of ecological imperialism (in a way, the Anthropocene)on a macro level — how the use of these pesticides connects to us, food…

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