Retells the story of Rachel Carson, a pioneering environmentalist who wrote and published "Silent Spring," the revolutionary book pointing out the dangerous effects of chemicals on the living world.

Provides background information on the circumstances that led to the writing of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and discusses its style and literary merit, its effectiveness at the time, and its subsequent influence.

" Reading Silent Spring as an outgrowth of Rachel Carson's love with Dorothy Freeman, Maxwell argues for the power of queer love now in the fight against climate change. There is something major missing from most accounts of Silent Spring and its impact:namely, Dorothy Freeman, with whom Rachel Carson had a love relationship for over a decade. Freeman had a summer house with her husband, Stan, on the island of Southport, Maine, where Carson settled...

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...