I'm sending this PDF of a quite wonderful piece by Michael B. Smith,
"Silence, Miss Carson!" Science, Gender, and the Reception of
"Silent Spring",
Feminist Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3
(Autumn, 2001), pp. 733-752, about the intense "criticism"
Rachel Carson received upon publishing
Silent Spring in October,
1962.
My essay contrasting
Silent Spring with Michael Harrington's
The Other America, published the same year, was published Monday
in
www.Counterpunch.org . (Scroll down the Left sidebar to find
it!)
Here's one letter to
The New Yorker that I found to be remarkable,
and yet sadly typical
:
- “Miss Rachel Carson’s reference to the selfishness of insecticide
manufacturers probably reflects her Communist sympathies, like a lot of
our writers these days. We can live without birds and animals, but, as
the current market slump shows, we cannot live without business. As for
insects, isn’t it just like a woman to be scared to death of a few little
bugs! As long as we have the H-bomb everything will be O.K.”
Mitchel Cohen