Silent Spring. by CARSON, Rachel - 1962: Drawings by Lois and Louis Darling.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962. The book that ignited the environmental movement First edition, first printing, of Carson's controversial account of the pesticide industry, of enormous consequence to the grassroots environmental movement, the deep ecology movement, and the rise of ecofeminism.
Carson, a nature writer and Editor-in-Chief for the Fish & Wildlife service, had long been concerned about the widespread use of DDT and other pesticides, but lack of interest from magazine publishers led her to put aside her idea for an exposé. When the book finally appeared in 1962, only a year before her death, its great strength was not in presenting new information - most of the data she included was already known to the scientific community - but in making the information accessible to non-scientists and instilling a sense of fear and urgency in the public. Not only an indictment of DDT, her book challenged the very foundations of post-war modernity and western capitalism, and forced humans to reconsider their relationship to the world around them. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine and front board lettered in gilt, green wavy-patterned endpapers, top edge yellow. With dust jacket. Pencil ownership inscription to half-title and some marginalia to contents. Extremities a little rubbed, the binding otherwise sharp, internally fresh. A near-fine copy in very good jacket, slight wear and creasing to extremities, not price-clipped, unfaded.