Typescript draft of Silent Spring

Rachel Carson, who had trained as a marine biologist, was among the first to sound the alarm about mankind’s negative impact on the environment with her book Silent Spring, which initially ran in three parts in The New Yorker in 1962. Carson described documented changes over time in a vivid, memorable, and lucid account that focused particularly on the pesticide DDT, which was decimating the songbird population. Thanks in large part to her work, the use of DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972. This edited typescript draft is from the archives’ Magazine Make-Up series, which also includes letters from readers submitted in response to Carson’s report. Silent Spring sold more than 2 million copies when published in full in September 1962, its reception catalyzing the environmental movement.