Rachel carson autobiography
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Silent Spring took Carson fyra years to complete. It meticulously described how DDT entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals, including human beings, and caused cancer and genetic damage. A single application on a crop, she wrote, killed insects for weeks and months—not only the targeted insects but countless more—and remained toxic in the environment even after it was diluted by rainwater. Carson concluded that DDT and other pesticides had irrevocably harmed animals and had contaminated the world's food supply. The book's most haunting and famous chapter, "A Fable for Tomorrow," depicted a nameless American town where all life—from fish to birds to apple blossoms to human children—had been "silenced" by the insidious effects of DDT.
First serialized in The New Yorker in June , the book alarmed readers across amerika and, not surprisingly, brought a howl of indignation from the chemical industry. "If man were to faithfully follow the teachings of M
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Rachel Carson
Edited by Debra Michals, PhD |
A marine biologist and nature writer, Rachel Carson catalyzed the global environmental movement with her book Silent Spring. Outlining the dangers of chemical pesticides, the book led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides and sparked the movement that ultimately led to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Born on May 27, on a farm in Springdale, Pennsylvania, Carson was the youngest of Robert and Maria McLean Carson’s three children. She developed a love of nature from her mother, and Carson became a published writer for children’s magazines by age She attended the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University), graduating magna cum laude in She next studied at the oceanographic institute at Woods Hole, Massachusetts and at Johns Hopkins University, where she received a master’s degree in zoology in Strained family finances forced her to forego pursuit of a doctorate and help su
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Rachel Carson was born in a small rural community in Pennsylvania near the Allegheny River, where she spent a great deal of time exploring the forests and streams around her family’s acre farm. Carson’s consuming passions as a young child were the nature surrounding her hillside home and her writing. She was first published at the age of ten in St. Nicholas, a magazine dedicated to the work of young writers, which also published the first works by William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In , Carson entered Pennsylvania College for Women as an English major determined to become a writer. Midway through her studies, however, she switched to biology. Her first experience with the ocean occurred during a summer fellowship at the U.S. Marine Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Upon her graduation in , Carson was awarded a scholarship to complete her graduate work in biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, an enormous accomplishment for a woman at that time.
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