Silent Spring

Rachel Carson 1962

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
environmental destruction pesticides ecology science

Our Take

Carson documented the devastation of DDT and the chemical industry's war on the natural world with scientific rigour and the moral authority of someone watching a crime being committed in plain sight. The chemical lobby tried to destroy her. She was dying of cancer while finishing the book. The environmental movement she helped create has spent sixty years trying to catch up with the damage she described.

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