San Antonio College Library

"The House of Life: Rachel Carson at Work, the first book to be based on her papers, is at once a literary biography and a reader. It tells what Rachel Carson accomplished during her life, how she went about doing it, and what special qualities she possessed that enabled her to write so well and so powerfully... The House of Life: Rachel Carson at Work, with its generous selections from both her published and unpublished writings, is the perfect introduction...

By drawing on previously unavailable sources and on interviews with those who knew her, Linda Lear gives a compelling portrait of this heroic woman, illuminating the origin of her connection with nature and of her determination to save what she loved. Lear reveals the unexpected influence of Carson's early experience with industrial pollution and examines her life-changing encounter with the possibility of global extinction in the frightening days...

Dramatic true stories about the frightening forces and constructive discoveries that have roiled and reordered our world.

Rachel Carson, founder of the modern environmental movement, began work on her seminal book Silent Spring in the late 1950s, when a dizzying array of synthetic pesticides had come into use. Leading this chemical onslaught was the insecticide DDT. Effective against crop pests as well as insects that transmitted human diseases such as typhus and malaria, DDT had at first appeared safe. But as its use expanded, alarming reports surfaced of collateral...