The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental MovementRachel Carson's Silent Spring antagonized 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. In The Gentle Subversive, Mark Hamilton Lytle offers a compact biography of Carson, illuminating the road that led to this vastly influential book. 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. We follow Carson from her childhood on a farm outside Pittsburgh, where she first developed her love of nature (and where, at age eleven, she published her first piece in a children's magazine), to her graduate work at Johns Hopkins and her career with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Lytle describes the genesis of her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, the incredible success of The Sea Around Us (a New York Times bestseller for over a year), and her determination to risk her fame in order to write her "poison book": Silent Spring. The author contends that despite Carson's demure, lady-like demeanor, she was subversive in her thinking and aggressive in her campaign against pesticides. Carson became the spokeswoman for a network of conservationists, scientists, women, and other concerned citizens who had come to fear the mounting dangers of the human assault on nature. What makes this story particularly compelling is that Carson took up this cause at the very moment when she herself faced a losing battle with cancer. Succinct and engaging, The Gentle Subversive is a story of success, celebrity, controversy, and vindication. It will inspire anyone interested in protecting the natural world or in women's struggle to find a voice in society. |
What people are saying - Write a review
User ratings
5 stars |
| ||
4 stars |
| ||
3 stars |
| ||
2 stars |
| ||
1 star |
|
Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified
LibraryThing Review
User Review - Shrike58 - LibraryThingNot so much a life of Carson as a consideration of how her career as a writer and public intellectual was influenced by her upbringing, education and career; with further reflection by Lytle as to how Carson has influenced his teaching and philosophy. Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - quantum_flapdoodle - LibraryThingA short and somewhat unsatisfying biography of Rachel Carson that was released for the 100th anniversary of her birth. The author covers most of the ground, but leaves a lot more unanswered than he answers in many cases. Read full review
Other editions - View all
The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the ... Mark Hamilton Lytle No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
agricultural American animals April Audubon Society became began believed biologist biology birds cancer Carson to Rodell Carson wrote chapter Charles Elton chemical companies Cottam creatures critics defined Despite discovered Dorothy Freeman earth ecology Edwin Way Teale Elton environment environmental movement field filled final finally financial find finding finish fire first fish Fish and Wildlife friends Houghton Mifflin House ofLife Huckins human Ibid ideas insects knew Lear literary living things magazine malaria Maria Carson Marie Rodell Mary Scott Skinker Michael Crichton mother National nature Nature’s Nicholas Magazine ocean officials Paul Brooks pesticides pollution posed published Rachel Carson RC to DF RCP-BLYU readers reflected Robert Robert Cushman Murphy Rodell sanderlings scientific scientists Sea-Wind sense September Shawn shore Silent Spring species Spock spraying story subversive summer tion told turned USDA wanted William Shawn women wondered Worster writing Yorker