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Authors: Rachel Carson

Silent Spring

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Silent Spring
Fortieth Anniversary Edition
Rachel Carson
Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

...

...

...

...

Dedication

Copyright

Epigraphs

Author's Note

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. A Fable for Tomorrow

2. The Obligation to Endure

3. Elixirs of Death

4. Surface Waters and Underground Seas

5. Realms of the Soil

6. Earth's Green Mantle

7. Needless Havoc

8. And No Birds Sing

9. Rivers of Death

10. Indiscriminately from the Skies

11. Beyond the Dreams of the Borgias

12. The Human Price

13. Through a Narrow Window

14. One in Every Four

15. Nature Fights Back

16. The Rumblings of an Avalanche

17. The Other Road

...

List of Principal Sources

Afterword

Index

About the Author

Also Available

 

Introduction by Linda Lear

Afterword by
Edward O. Wilson

A M
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Boston New York

To Albert Schweitzer
who said

"Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall.
He will end by destroying the earth."

First Mariner Books edition 2002

Copyright © 1962 by Rachel L. Carson
Copyright © renewed 1990 by Roger Christie
Introduction copyright © 2002 by Linda Lear
Afterword copyright © 2002 by Edward O. Wilson

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York, 10003.

www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN
0-618-25305-x
ISBN
0-618-24906-0 (pbk.)

Drawings by Lois and Louis Darling

Portions of this book were first published as a series of
articles in
The New Yorker.

Printed in the United States of America

DOC 10 19 18 17 16

The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.

K
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***

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.

E. B. W
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Author's Note

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to burden the text with footnotes but I realize that many of my readers will wish to pursue some of the subjects discussed. I have therefore included a list of my principal sources of information, arranged by chapter and page, in an appendix which will be found at the back of the book.

B
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C
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Contents

Acknowledgments
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Introduction by Linda Lear
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List of Principal Sources
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Afterword by Edward O. Wilson
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Index
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Acknowledgments

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written in January 1958, Olga Owens Huckins told me of her own bitter experience of a small world made lifeless, and so brought my attention sharply back to a problem with which I had long been concerned. I then realized I must write this book.

During the years since then I have received help and encouragement from so many people that it is not possible to name them all here. Those who have freely shared with me the fruits of many years' experience and study represent a wide variety of government agencies in this and other countries, many universities and research institutions, and many professions. To all of them I express my deepest thanks for time and thought so generously given.

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