Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, And The Rise Of The Environmental Movement

Description

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement Rachel Carson's Silent Spring antagonised some of the most powerful interests in the nation ? including the farm block and the agricultural chemical industry ? and helped launch the modern environmental movement. Mark Hamilton Lytle explores the evolution of Carson's ideas about nature, her love for the sea, her career as a biologist and, above all, her emergence as a writer of extraordinary moral and ecological vision. The author contends that despite Carson's demure, lady-like demeanour, she was subversive in her thinking and aggressive in her campaign against pesticides. Succinct and engaging, The Gentle Subversive is a story of success, celebrity, controversy and vindication. First published 2007.

Reviews

"Lytle's narrative biography in The Gentle Subversive provides a refreshingly compact, thoughtful, yet readable portrait of Rachel Carson, as well as a most timely and intelligent discussion of her significance into the twenty-first century. Readers planning to read only one book about Rachel Carson would do well to read this one. Readers planning to read several books on her would do well to start here."--Priscilla Coit Murphy, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
"Lytle's biography is a beneficial introduction to Carson's life, providing insight on her ecological philosophy, her writing, and her role as an alternative voice in the realm of science and technology."--Andy Karvonen, Technology and Culture
"The Gentle Subversive is well worth pursuing."--American Scientist
"The author wonderfully weaves literary interpretation, intimate biographical detail, and sociopolitical observations into a new narrative on the life and influence of Rachel Carson."--Jim Bingen, Michigan State University
"The Gentle Subversive is an easy book to read, providing a logical and interesting account of the development of Rachel Carson as a writer and as the eventual spokeswoman/symbol for the environmental movement of the 1960s and beyond."--Kathryn Flynn, Auburn University

Author description

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Table of contents

Foreword; Prologue; 1. Spring: Sense of Wonder: Under the Sea-Wind; 2. Summer: Florescence: The Sea Around Us; 3. Fall: The Fullness of Life: From The Edge of the Sea to DDT; 4. Winter: The Poison Book and the Dark Season of Vindication; Epilogue: Rachel Carson: The Legacy; Afterword; Bibliography; Index