
The Gentle Subversive
New Narratives in American History
Lytle(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 1. March 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-0-19-517247-8 (ISBN)
Description
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring antagonized some of the most powerful interests in the nation-including the farm block and the agricultural chemical industry-and helped launch the modern environmental movement. In The Gentle Subversive, Mark Hamilton Lytle offers a compact biography of Carson, illuminating the road that led to this vastly influential book. Lytle explores the evolution of Carson's ideas about nature, her love for the sea, her career as a biologist, and above all her emergence as a writer of extraordinary moral and ecological vision. We follow Carson from her childhood on a farm outside Pittsburgh, where she first developed her love of nature (and where, at age eleven, she published her first piece in a children's magazine), to her graduate work at Johns Hopkins and her career with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Lytle describes the genesis of her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, the incredible success of The Sea Around Us (a New York Times bestseller for over a year), and her determination to risk her fame in order to write her "poison book": Silent Spring.
The author contends that despite Carson's demure, lady-like demeanor, she was subversive in her thinking and aggressive in her campaign against pesticides. Carson became the spokeswoman for a network of conservationists, scientists, women, and other concerned citizens who had come to fear the mounting dangers of the human assault on nature. What makes this story particularly compelling is that Carson took up this cause at the very moment when she herself faced a losing battle with cancer. Succinct and engaging, The Gentle Subversive is a story of success, celebrity, controversy, and vindication. It will inspire anyone interested in protecting the natural world or in women's struggle to find a voice in society.
The author contends that despite Carson's demure, lady-like demeanor, she was subversive in her thinking and aggressive in her campaign against pesticides. Carson became the spokeswoman for a network of conservationists, scientists, women, and other concerned citizens who had come to fear the mounting dangers of the human assault on nature. What makes this story particularly compelling is that Carson took up this cause at the very moment when she herself faced a losing battle with cancer. Succinct and engaging, The Gentle Subversive is a story of success, celebrity, controversy, and vindication. It will inspire anyone interested in protecting the natural world or in women's struggle to find a voice in society.
Reviews / Votes
The author wonderfully weaves literary interpretation, intimate biographical detail, and sociopolitical observations into a new narrative on the life and influence of Rachel Carson. Jim Bingen, Michigan State University The Gentle Subversive is an easy book to read, providing a logical and interesting account of the development of Rachel Carson as a writer and as the eventual spokeswoman/symbol for the environmental movement of the 1960s and beyond. Kathryn Flynn, Auburn UniversityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Illustrations
13 illus.
Dimensions
Height: 190 mm
Width: 120 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
276 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-517247-8 (9780195172478)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Mark Hamilton Lytle
The Gentle Subversive
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement
E-Book
07/2007
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€11.99
Available for download

Mark H. Lytle
Gentle Subversive
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement
Book
02/2007
Oxford University Press Inc
€17.32
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Mark Hamilton Lytle is Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Bard College. He is the author of America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon (OUP, 2006) and coauthor of After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, Fifth Edition (2005), and Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic, Fifth Edition (2004).
Content
Foreword ; Prologue ; 1. Spring: Sense of Wonder: Under the Sea-Wind ; 2. Summer: Florescence: The Sea Around Us ; 3. Fall: The Fullness of Life: From The Edge of the Sea to DDT ; 4. Winter: The Poison Book and the Dark Season of Vindication ; Epilogue: Rachel Carson: The Legacy ; Afterword ; Bibliography ; Index