Fifty Years after its Publication, Rachel Carson’s Book Remains All-Too-Relevant
Fifty years ago this week,
The New Yorker began publishing Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring. A series of three articles — excerpts from the book that would be published that September — appeared on June 16, 23, and 30, 1962 under the banner of “A Reporter at Large.” Carson’s account of environmental peril resulting from the overabundant use of petrochemical-based pesticides unfolded between cartoons and genteel ads for airlines, tasteful upscale merchandise, hotels, and restaurants. It’s impossible for anyone who was not then an adult to imagine what it would have been like to read these pieces in 1962, a time when such chemicals were generally regarded as a modern miracle for home gardeners and industrial agriculture alike. “We thought these things were safe,” said my mother, who read
Silent Spring as it rolled out in
The New Yorker.
Reading
Silent Spring today, it is disquieting to realize how much was already known in 1962 about the environmental health impacts of petrochemicals.
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