Rachel Carson’s lyrical, popular books about the sea, including her best-selling The Sea Around Us, set a standard for nature writing. By the late 1950s, Carson was the most respected science writer in America.

She completed Silent Spring (1962) against formidable personal odds, and with it shaped a powerful social movement that has altered the course of history. In Silent Spring, Carson asserted that “the right of the citizen to be secure in his own home against the intrusion of poisons applied by other persons” must surely be a basic human right. She was the first to challenge the moral vacuity of a government that refused to take responsibility for or to acknowledge evidence of environmental damage.

In this volume, today’s foremost scientists and writers give compelling evidence that Carson’s transformative insights — her courage for the earth — are giving a new generation of activists the inspiration they need to move consumers, industry, and government to action.

Contributors include John Elder, Al Gore, John Hay, Freeman House, Linda Lear, Robert Michael Pyle, Janisse Ray, Sandra Steingraber, Terry Tempest Williams, and E. O. Wilson

1 Peter Matthiessen Introduction

19 Linda Lear Love, Fear, and Witnessing

27 Edward O. Wilson On Silent Spring

37 Jim Lynch Rachel Carson in The Highest Tide

49 Sandra Steingraber Silent Spring: A Father-Daughter Dance

63 Al Gore Rachel Carson and Silent Spring

79 John Elder Withered Sedge and Yellow Wood: Poetry in Silent Spring

97 John Hay A Long View of Rachel Carson

109 Janisse Ray Changing Sex

129 Terry Tempest Williams The Moral Courage of Rachel Carson

147 Freeman House Silent Future: Rachel Carson and the Creeping Apocalypse

165 Robert Michael Pyle Always a Naturalist

183 Linda Lear Remembrance of Life

199 Contributors 203 Rachel Carson Bibliography