On a Farther Shore
The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her seminal book,Silent Spring, here is an indelible new portrait of Rachel Carson, founder of the modern environmental movement. She loved the ocean and wrote three books about its mysteries, including the international bestsellerThe Sea around Us. But it was with her fourth book,Silent Spring, that this unassuming biologist transformed our relationship with the natural world. Rachel Carson began work onSilent Springin the late 1950s, when a dizzying array of synthetic pesticides had come into use. Leading this chemical onslaught was the insecticide DDT, whose inventor had won a Nobel Prize for its discovery. Effective against crop pests as well as insects that transmitted human diseases such as typhus and malaria, DDT had at first appeared safe. But as its use expanded, alarming reports surfaced of collateral damage to fish, birds, and other wildlife.Silent Springwas a chilling indictment of DDT and its effects, which were lasting, widespread, and lethal. Published in 1962,Silent Springshocked the public and forced the government to take actiondespite a withering attack on Carson from the chemicals industry. The book awakened the world to the heedless contamination of the environment and eventually led to the establishment of theEnvironmental Protection Agencyand to the banning of DDT and a host of related pesticides. By drawing frightening parallels between dangerous chemicals and the then-pervasive fallout from nuclear testing, Carson opened a fault line between the gentle ideal of conservation and the more urgent new concept of environmentalism. Elegantly written and meticulously researched,On a Farther Shorereveals a shy yet passionate woman more at home in the natural world than in the literary one that embraced her. William Souder also writes sensitively of Carsons romantic friendship with Dorothy Freeman and ofCarsonsdeath from cancer in 1964. This extraordinary biography captures the essence of one of the great reformers of the twentieth century.