On a Farther Shore

By William Souder,

Book cover of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

Book 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…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked On a Farther Shore as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

While I knew that Rachel Carson was involved in starting the environmental movement with her revolutionary book Silent Spring, I had no idea that she was also a best-selling popular science author who wrote lyrical books about the ocean. It was fascinating to learn about her life and the challenges that she faced in while standing up to big chemical companies, whose profits were threatened by her writing. 

Rachel Carson was one of the most popular nature writers in the country, and she could have had a great career if she had stopped there. But powerful new pesticides and insecticides were doing irreparable damage to America’s flora and fauna, and she could not sit by and watch this happen. Her full story is captured in William Souder’s comprehensive biography, The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson. Her courageous fight against the unconscionable contamination of the earth, while suffering from life-ending cancer, is a powerful story about a unique American heroine.

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