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Rachel Carson: scientist, sentimentalist, icon

Broadcast Date: Jan. 14, 2007

There was a strange stillness. The birds for example - where had they gone? ... The few birds seen anywhere were moribund: they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices.

In 1962, Rachel Carson shook the world violently awake with the chilling vision of Silent Spring, her book about the terrible impact of pollution on the natural world. She started the modern environmental movement and became an icon in the process. Now, on the hundredth anniversary of her birth, The Sunday Edition looks back at her controversial life and career.

Rachel Carson: scientist, sentimentalist, icon

• Silent Spring was Carson's most dramatic and enduring success, she would never see the book's great impact. She died of breast cancer in April 1964, less then two years after the book was published.

• While the book made Rachel Carson enduringly famous, she was a successful author before its publication. Her books The Sea Around Us, The Edge of the Sea and Under the Sea-Wind were all bestsellers in the U.S.

• Silent Spring ranks 16th on Discover magazine's list of the best science books of all time. It also rated an honorable mention on a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries, as compiled by U.S. conservative website humanevents.com, a list that includes Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto and The Origin of Species.

Rachel Carson: scientist, sentimentalist, icon

Medium: Radio

Program: The Sunday Edition

Broadcast Date: Jan. 14, 2007

Guest(s): Linda Lear

Interviewer: Michael Enright

Duration: 29:23

Photo: Rachel Carson, from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Last updated:
April 22, 2009