Scan barcode
rainys's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
3.5
I'm glad I finally got to read this book. It is like reading a piece of history rather than current information and calls to action. The writing is easy to understand but the content is depressing.
smateer73's review against another edition
3.0
2.5 stars. This book was kinda boring, as most school books are. I thought it got an important message across, albeit one that’s not as pertinent today. I think it mostly just repeated the same examples and reasonings over and over again, which slightly lessened the impact of it. That being said, I did enjoy learning about how it leads to mutations and changing of DNA. Wanting to become a genetic researcher, that fascinated me. (I know, I’m a huge nerd).
graywild's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
sad
fast-paced
4.0
Rating somewhere between 3 to 4. Published in 1962 Rachel Carson documents the environmental issues with use of insecticides and pesticides, in particular the chlorinated chemicals such as DDT. Many of the issues were known and published but buried in scientific journals and government documents. At times heavy on science but she does a good job of bringing awareness of the issues to the general public who then pressured Congress to act. She writes in an easy to understand style. These chemicals were used heavily in the US and globally. Many times the insects targeted were not eradicated. Birds, fish, animals and humans (farmers, gardens, general population) were all subject to side effects including death. I can't image reading this in the 1960s when most of this wasn't known by the general public.
carlyxdeexx's review against another edition
4.0
So glad I could read this at long last—I picked it up at The Universe in Verse and wasn’t able to get started on it until now. It’s well-written, compelling, and just full of easy-to-digest science—if you like that sort of thing, you’ll eat it right up. It can be a bit tricky to get through at times if you lead a tiring commuter’s life and tend to fall asleep on buses. It also seems kind of like a no-brainer reading this book in 2019, like. Of course you have to think carefully about the chemicals you put out into the world to eradicate insect life. Of course they could have adverse side effects on humans! Obviously! I spent a lot of this book just marveling at how little companies and governments cared about the holistic effects of their actions, and took notice every time Carson argued that alternatives to harmful pesticides being sprayed en masse would decrease spending, increase profits, and do a better job because this was probably the most effective argument when it comes to persuading pesticide-users. These same points about how harmful these chemicals are, how ineffective they are, and the unintended toll they take are repeated and echoed and referenced throughout—the book can seem pretty repetitive until you remember it was initially serialized. I still really did appreciate reading it, and its impact is very clear. I’m grateful to live in a world that is now at least a bit more skeptical of the mass-application of harmful chemical treatments.
wordsmithreads's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
The saddest part is we created more agencies, then created different types of ways to poison ourselves (see: processed foods, plastics, etc)