The book provides some welcome context on the era from which Carson’s sensibilities sprung. But really gets off track from time to time in providing too much, as if trying to make a causal argument for the existence of her calling. The most important context is her attention to her surroundings, not the random mention of the tragic exposure of Japanese fishermen to Pacific hydrogen bomb testing. She wrote, I believe, to take aim at the arrogance of man which puts us at not only the top of the food chain, but global life itself.

Somehow I got through listening to the audiobook, competently read by a gentleman who sounds a lot like Ted Baxter from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Or someone who has sincerely practiced reading the phonebook. With feeling.

Amusements aside, she represents the end of the beginning of a collective conscience regarding earth jurisprudence. The author wins that point again and again. And again. ( )

green

On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder is a biography of Silent Spring author Rachel Carson. On a Farther Shore is being published on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring. It seems to me that everyone should know who Rachel Carson is and what Silent Spring was about, but, much to my surprise, that is not the case. With its publication in 1962 Silent Spring exposed the dangers of DDT to the general public and really set into motion the beginning of the modern environmental movement. At the time DDT was the miracle pesticide and it was going to eradicate many of the pests that plague human populations.

Souder's thorough biography portrays Carson as an unassuming, likeable woman with great underlying strength. While she was trained as a biologist at a time when women in the sciences was uncommon, she also had always enjoyed writing. Carson found a way to combine her two interests. She worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a writer but also wrote articles in her free time. Carson never married and supported her family all her life.

Souder also covers many of the writers who influenced Carson (Richard Jeffries, Henry Williamson, and Aldo Leopold) and plenty of information about the times in which she lived (nuclear testing, cold war tensions) as well as the emerging discovery that pesticides perhaps were not the answer. About half the book covers the writing of Silent Spring and the repercussions that followed. Carson exhausted from her battle with cancer while under enormous stress, died shortly after the publication of Silent Spring in 1962.

In On a Farther Shore, Souder, an esteemed environmental writer, has given us a very well written, well rounded, well researched tribute to Rachel Carson. The biography includes Notes, a Bibliography, and an Index (which makes me say, "Yes!")

Very Highly Recommended; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Crown Publishing and Netgalley for review purposes.
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The presentation of the historical context of Rachel Carson's writings was outstanding. The book is well worth reading for this alone. I didn't feel I understood Rachel Carson well as a person. Also, I would have appreciated a fuller description of her writing, especially "Silent Spring" which I haven't read - yet. What was it about her style that connected so readily with ordinary people? The review below me by LibStre is excellent and I agree with all of his/her points. ( )

A detailed, touching, and literary journey through the life behind the work of Rachel Carson. Examining it 50 years after Silent Spring makes that achievement and others all the more wondrous. ( )