While many may likely most readily recognize Rachel Carson as the author of “Silent Spring,” the 1962 environmental science book that successfully reached a wide reading audience and opened the eyes of millions to the risks of indiscriminate overuse of pesticides, it was as a marine biologist that she began her writing career and became a popularly read author.
If a friend were to ask you to recommend a modern book – just one – that would help him or her to understand your fascination with natural history, you’d likely be hard pressed to do it. I know I certainly would. After all, there are so many excellent works that have been published within this wide-ranging category over the past fifty years that picking just one would be quite a challenge indeed.