Description:

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her seminal book, Silent Spring, here is an indelible new portrait of Rachel Carson, founder of the environmental movement

She loved the ocean and wrote three books about its mysteries, including the international bestseller The Sea Around Us. But it was with her fourth book, Silent Spring, that this unassuming biologist transformed our relationship with the natural world.

Rachel Carson began work on 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, whose inventor had won a Nobel Prize for its discovery. 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 damage to fish, birds, and other wildlife. Silent Spring was a chilling indictment of DDT and its effects, which were lasting, widespread, and lethal.

Published in 1962, Silent Spring shocked the public and forced the government to take action-despite a withering attack on Carson from the chemicals industry. The book awakened the world to the heedless contamination of the environment and eventually led to the establishment of the EPA and to the banning of DDT and a host of related pesticides. By drawing frightening parallels between dangerous chemicals and the then-pervasive fallout from nuclear testing, Carson opened a fault line between the gentle ideal of conservation and the more urgent new concept of environmentalism.

Elegantly written and meticulously researched, On a Farther Shore reveals a shy yet passionate woman more at home in the natural world than in the literary one that embraced her. William Souder also writes sensitively of Carson's romantic friendship with Dorothy Freeman, and of her death from cancer in 1964. This extraordinary new biography captures the essence of one of the great reformers of the twentieth century.

A New York Times Notable Book of 2012

“A suspenseful tale of the literary life…utterly inspiring.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Captivating…Souder writes vividly and with great empathy for his subject and her cause.” —New York Times Book Review

“A delightful, fascinating, engrossing read about some of the most important insights of modern science. You’ll find yourself thinking about Carson whenever you take a walk in the woods.” —Slate.com

From the Hardcover edition.

Review

''William Souder's On a Farther Shore is one of those rare and extraordinary biographies that are at once brilliant portraiture and important environmental history. The great Rachel Carson comes alive again in these vivid pages -- honest, committed, brave.'' --Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University and New York Times bestselling author of Wilderness Warrior

''Rachel Carson changed the way we live now, and in William Souder she has a biographer who has given us a powerful portrait of a woman and of her work. Anyone interested in the intellectual, political, and cultural life of the past half century should read this fine book.'' --Jon Meacham, New York Times bestselling author

''Rachel Carson is the great green heroine, the first person to combine her love of the natural world with a penetrating glance at industrial modernity. William Souder captures her importance in this engaging biography.'' --Bill McKibben, New York Times bestselling author

''In this expansive, nuanced biography, Souder portrays Carson as a woman passionate in friendship, poetic and innovative in her books about the sea, gentle but ambitious . . . Fifty years later, her insights are surprisingly relevant: ''We're challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery not of nature, but of ourselves.'' --Publishers Weekly

''Fifty years after the publication of Rachel Carson's seminal Silent Spring, Pulitzer Prize nominee Souder examines the legacy and lasting impact of Carson's passionate environmental work . . .That her views on DDT were eventually proven correct is just a small part of her legacy as an environmental pioneer, but also a defining instance of citizen activism. A poignant, galvanizing, meaningful tribute.'' --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

''William Souder eloquently and convincingly argues for the relevance of Rachel Carson's writings to today's daunting environmental challenges. In this beautifully crafted biography, Souder shines a light as luminescent as some of Rachel Carson's favorite specimens of marine life on one of the twentieth century's most important figures.'' --Elizabeth J. Rosenthal, author of Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson

About the Author

WILLIAM SOUDER has written for many prominent newspapers and magazines and is the author of A Plague of Frogs, a book about the investigation of outbreaks of deformed frogs across North America a decade ago, and Under a Wild Sky, a biography of John James Audubon and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He lives in Grant, Minnesota.