Silent Spring is a watershed moment in the history of environmentalism, credited with launching the modern environmental movement. In synthesizing a jumble of scientific and medical information into a coherent argument, Carson successfully challenged major chemical industries and the idea that modern societies could and should exert mastery over nature at any cost. Her critique remains salient today.

This book provides the first in-depth analysis, contextualisation and overview of Silent Spring, a critical work in the history of environmentalism, surveying its lasting impact on the environmentalist movement in the last fifty years.