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The Gentle Subversive New Narratives in American History

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The Gentle Subversive New Narratives in American History The Gentle Subversive New Narratives in American History Series Editors James West Davidson Michael B. Stoff Richard Godbeer Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 James E. Crisp Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett's Last Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution John Hope Franklin In Search of the Promised Land: Loren Schweninger A Slave Family in the Old South Mark Hamilton Lytle The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement The Gentle Subversive RACHEL CARSON, SILENT SPRING, AND THE RlSE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT MARK HAMILTON LYTLE NEW YORK OXFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2007 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2007 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 http://www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lytle, Mark H. The gentle subversive : Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the rise of the environmental movement / Mark Hamilton Lytle. p. cm. — (New narratives in American history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-19-517246-1—ISBN-13:978-0-19-517247-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 0-19-517246-9—ISBN 0-19-517247-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Carson, Rachel, 1907-1964.2. Biologists—United States—Biography. 3. Environmentalists—United States—Biography. 4. Science writers—United States—Biography. I. Title. QH31.C33L982007 570.92—dc22 [B] 2006049350 Printing number: 9 87654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper CONTENTS Foreword vi Acknowledgments viii PROLOGUE 1 One SPRING Sense of Wonder: Under the Sea-Wind 13 Two SUMMER Florescence: The Sea Around Us 55 Three FALL The Fullness of Life: From The Edge of the Sea to DDT 94 Four WINTER The Poison Book and the Dark Season of Vindication 133 EPILOGUE Rachel Carson: The Legacy 196 Afterword 231 Bibliography 259 Index 262 V FOREWORD "There is properly no history; only biography," Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed. Few historians would agree. The frame of biography is simply too narrow to suit their aims. Measuring as they do the lines of change and continuity, concerned as they must be in reconstructing context, historians often find a single life unequal to these tasks. Yet some lives can serve such purposes if they are recreated with a telling sense of time and place. Such surely is the case with Mark Lytle's The Gentle Subversive. In it, Lytle chronicles the life of Rachel Carson, a modern-day naturalist who produced one of the most important books of the twentieth century. When it appeared in 1962, Silent Sprmgsounded an alarm that still rings today, of an impending crisis brought on by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. What began as a well- intentioned effort to rid the environment of insects that de- stroyed crops and spread disease ended by threatening to poison the planet. To sound such an alarm in the mid-twentieth century was to subvert a powerful paradigm, one that promised better living through chemistry and encouraged human hubris toward the natural world. It was also to storm the male-dominated bastions of business and science, which together touted these chemical nostrums. Carson mounted her assault by relying on her training as a scientist and her talent as a writer, and Lytle shrewdly links vi FO REWORD each chapter to a writing project—an essay or a book—whose twin tales of life and work reveal season by season the natural rhythms of her career. And more—for the story of this gentle subversive mirrors that of many women forced to operate in a male-dominated world. Carson's network of family, friends, and colleagues sustained her as she struggled with the critics arrayed against her from without and the terrible illnesses that beset her from within and eventually took her life. It was a life more resonant than most, which succeeded in raising the environmental consciousness of the nation and, in a fashion, spawning the environmental movement itself. Hers is also a life as interdependent with those around her as the living things she so artfully portrayed are interdependent with one an- other. In that sense, The Gentle Subversive can be termed a truly ecological biography, one that is always sensitive to context and relationships. It fulfills one of the primary purposes of Oxford's New Narratives in American History series—to tell a story that makes its subjects come alive and makes historical sense of them. James West Davidson Michael B. Stoff Series Editors vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Once upon a time, in a graduate seminar at Yale University, I asked the student sitting next to me what he was working on. "Environmental ideas in the nineteenth century," he told me. His project struck me as rather novel and unexpected, since in 1968 we had not yet celebrated Earth Day and few people thought much about the environment, especially as an academic subject. I myself had chosen a more conventional path toward diplomatic history and the Cold War but could not help thinking that this fellow, Donald Worster, was onto something, and indeed he was. His has been one of the most inspiring and enlightening voices in my generation of historians. Along with William Cronon, Carolyn Merchant, Richard White, and others, Don has helped to create a field that did not exist when I entered the profession. These his- torians have provided me with the intellectual resources I have needed to make a transition into a subfield some call "environ- mental diplomacy." Kurk Dorsey, who kindly read this book in manuscript, has been a welcome fellow traveler. Several generations of Bard College students have made this journey with me. Among the many courses I teach at Bard, none has given me as much personal or pedagogical satisfaction as American Environmental History. Students in this course are the most intellectually curious and socially committed I teach. My colleagues in the Environmental Studies Program have been ac- viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS tive in furthering my education. Daniel Berthold has been a rich source of ideas and readings. Bill Maple has done the best he can to drive ignorance from my mind, and Kris Feder has worked to convert me to her passion for Henry George. Much of the book was written during a year I spent at University College Dublin. My good friends and colleagues Michael Laffin and Ronan Fanning made the year both possible and rewarding. Richard, Kathy, and Lizzie Aldous made sure I felt at home. Whether in- troducing me to the Ipswich Town "Tractor Boys," providing a venue for the Super Bowl, or discussing the world of history from the ins and outs of departmental politics to the dynamics of the international system, Richard was a constant source of fellowship and support for my writing projects. Librarians at Bard, and especially at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, have made the research for this book a pleasure. In that regard, I would like to pay a special tribute to Linda Lear, whose work did so much to guide mine. Linda provided timely advice and led me to essential resources. My research assistant, Nick Buccelli, appreciated exactly the kind of material I was seek- ing. Dr. Stanley Freeman, Jr., made available photographs from his collection so that the book could keep Carson's "spirit alive for a new generation." Mark Stoll, an early reader of the manu- script, shared some of the work he is doing on Rachel Carson. He also introduced me to Fritz Davis, whose historical sleuthing es- tablished a most significant link between Carson and the work of Charles Elton. Fritz generously shared his insights with me. Several other anonymous readers were equally helpful and inci- sive. Rob Anderson, a dedicated environmentalist and birder, read the manuscript in its early form. So did my son Jesse, who, ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS despite his trip to the "dark side" as an administrator at Mount Holyoke College, has preserved his keen critical judgment. I'm grateful to both for providing me with another generation's point of view. My wife, Gretchen, has lived patiently through my writing process, as always constructively skeptical and supportive. This book is dedicated to Jim Davidson and Mike Stoff for good reason. Jim and I set out long ago in writing After the Fact as the "Mutt and Jeff" of history—Jim is very tall. Along with Mike we formed what I think of as the "Three Amigos" of history. We have had a lifetime conversation about what history should be and, even more, how it should be written. History may be a narrative form, but few historians actually write narrative. Thus, when Jim and Mike conceived the New Narratives in American History series, I was eager to be part of it. The idea to make Rachel Carson my subject was my own; the finished book in- volved heavy collaboration. On our morning jogs, Jim and I have helped each other think about our respective stories (his is a forthcoming biography of the antilynching crusader Ida B.
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