It is extraordinarily difficult to be hyperbolic in introducing any discussion of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring. So virulent was the campaign waged against her by the industries she challenged with it, and so deep and long-lasting have been the effects it brought about in the environmental consciousness of multiple generations of people around the world – effects that literally changed the manner in which pesticides were understood, used, and regulated – that its importance to Twentieth Century non-fiction, and to the literature of ecology as a whole, is almost impossible to over-emphasize.
Which is why I’ve long been hoping that the Library of America would add it to their remarkable collection of noteworthy American literature and letters. Now, this Spring, thanks to a gift from The Gould Family Foundation Foundation that not only supported the creation of the volume but that will also keep it in print in the series, Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment will join the works of Muir, Leopold, the Bartrams, and all the other great works contained in the series.
