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Silent Spring

Published by Aubrey Hicks on

Featuring Raphael Bostic, Lisa Collins, Richard Green, and Dan Mazmanian In this edition of the Bedrosian Book Club Podcast, we’re looking at the classic nonfiction book, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, the book that launched the environmental movement. Edward O. Wilson said of the book, “We are still poisoning the air and water and eroding the biosphere, albeit less so than if Rachel Carson had not written. Today we understand better than ever why we must press the effort to save the environment all the way home, true to the mind and spirit of the valiant author of Silent Spring.” We look back at the book and the transformation in thinking that it engendered. Follow us on Twitter! Follow Raphael at @RaphaelBostic and Richard at @keynesianr To listen to the Bedrosian Book Club Podcast discussion of Silent Spring, click the orange arrow in the Soundcloud player at the top of this post. Or you can download it and subscribe through Soundcloud or iTunes

Next Month …

We’ll take a look at gentrification, with A Neighborhood That Never Changes by Japonica Brown-Saracino.

Links to things we talk about:

Natural Resources Defense Council – on Rachel Carson

Although their role will probably always be less celebrated than wars, marches, riots or stormy political campaigns, it is books that have at times most powerfully influenced social change in American life. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense galvanized radical sentiment in the early days of the American revolution; Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe roused Northern antipathy to slavery in the decade leading up to the Civil War; and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which in 1962 exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity’s faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement.

‘Under the Dome’ may be a turning point for China’s environment policy DDT and Malaria Prevention: Addressing the Paradox Barry Commoner, Making Peace With the Planet The Limits to growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind Rachel Carson deniers Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition Precautionary principle The World Health Organization’s research arm declares glyphosate a probable carcinogen Environmental Awakening Our Common Future (Oxford Paperbacks) Arsenic in California Wines Roger Noll Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West This podcast was produced by Jonathan Schwartz and Aubrey Hicks. Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

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