Book Review - Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

I finished reading this highly acclaimed book a couple of weeks ago, but the information will stay with me for the rest of my life. I’ll not remember each detail, but will remember the all encompassing lesson in it’s text. Three words summarize this marvellous reading: Respect our environment. And we humans are at the end of the food chain. Keeping our food sources healthy, beginning with the land is our responsibility. These are the messages that Rachel Carson penned in Silent Spring

Published in 1962, much of the information is dated for that time, but the deep concerns about our environment remain the same, and now include the issues of genetic modification. 

I’m not suggesting that only the trees and grass, birds and bees, or even ants and spiders are at stake. Our very lives are at stake. However, not today or even tomorrow but with a gradual untraceable demise. Sound frightening?  Sound impossible?  Sci-fi?

As I read this small but very dense volume I had all of these wonderings.  From chemical sprays on lawns and fields into the food that we eat, the food that the worms and birds eat, into our bodies, we create our own vulnerabilities. In minute amounts that become concentrated with time, our vulnerabilities grow. Although much progress has been made to reverse the effects of the chemicals used, to stop the use of many chemicals, to develop organic farming there is still much change needed. The change is required at individual, scientific and in the field of research.

To wake up in the morning without the birdsong of robins or wrens, the cry of the gulls and crows, the buzz of hummingbird wing seems impossible. To go through one day without seeing spider webs in the sun and wind, bees in sunflowers and roses seems outlandish. To step outside at night and not hear any night birds in the deep quiet, seems far too lonely. And without our insects and birds there will also be no sunflowers and roses. These are the warnings that Rachel Carson presented in a very interesting, yet research based manner.

Will I read this book again? Maybe. Silent Spring will definitely stay on my bookshelf as a piece of history and a reminder that my small patch of earth, the plants I grow and the tiny community of life within, deserve my care and attention.

“This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem 

and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits.”

~ Rachel Carson

Title: Silent Spring
Author:  Rachel Carson
Publisher: Fawcett World Library
Publication Date: 1962 (no ISBN on my issue)
Format:  Paperback
From Amazon books (newer reprints):
ISBN-13: 004-6442249065
ISBN-10: 0618249060
Type:  Fiction