Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement.

• Author: Kellman, Steven G.
• Position: Book review

GENTLE SUBVERSIVE: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement BY MARK H. LYTLE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2007, 176 PAGES, $23.00

Though most books transform their writers, few leave lasting effects on readers. Fewer still, regardless of sales, can be said to have changed the world. The Origin of Species, The Communist Manifesto, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Jungle, and The Gulag Archipelago each sundered the path of history into before and after. So, too, did Silent Spring, published in 1962. In his Introduction to its 1994 edition, AI Gore wrote: "Without this book, the environmental movement might have been delayed or never have developed at all."

Silent Spring, whose original working title was Man Against the Earth, is a carefully documented account of how human beings are poisoning the planet with toxic chemicals as well as an eloquent plea to restore the delicate balance of nature. When the book first appeared, to celebration and vituperation, its author, Rachel Carson, already had established a reputation as an outstanding science writer. Sales of her first book, Under the Sea-Wind: A Naturalists Picture of Ocean Life (1941), were hurt by an incident at Pearl Harbor a few weeks after its publication, in November 1941. Yet, the commercial success of The Sea Around Us (1951 ) and The Edge of the Sea (1955) enabled Carson to leave her job at the Fish and Wildlife Service and devote herself to writing. Mark Hamilton Lytle, a historian who teaches at Bard College, attributes Carson's achievement to her talents as both scientist and writer: "Her dedication as a scientist made her credible; her gifts as a writer made her inspirational" He characterizes Carson as "a gentle subversive," who, despite and because of her lack of flash, managed to trigger a paradigm shift.

Gentle Subversive is a succinct volume that, in chapters titled with the seasons of the year, traces Carson's life, from her birth near Pittsburgh in 1907 to her death in Maryland in 1964. She pursued graduate work in zoology at Johns Hopkins University but was frustrated by obstacles to women in science. Forced to support her mother, sister, and nephew during the Depression, Carson took a government job that did not allow her to exercise fully her research interests and abilities. She lived with her mother until the older woman's death, and she adopted her nephew after her sister passed away. She never married, and her most intimate relationship was with a...