DECEMBER 2022 - AudioFile
This audiobook is a history of the environmental movement in America 1950-1973—from just before the publication of SILENT SPRING, by Rachel Carson, to just after the first Earth Day in April 1970. It also is a collective biography of influential figures in that movement, including Carson, William O. Douglas, John F. Kennedy, Coretta Scott King, and others. Stephen Graybill delivers a solid narration. His even tone carries listeners through the author’s occasionally tedious attention to detail. He sets off quoted material—mostly from publications—with slight pauses that act as oral quotation marks. The author breaks chapters into smaller parts, which also help listeners absorb the message. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
"Doug Brinkley has done it again! Silent Spring Revolution showcases his mastery of the art of storytelling, deep knowledge of presidential history and passion for the natural world. Through exhaustive research and beautiful writing, Brinkley creates vibrant portraits of the grassroots activists—Rachel Carson, Cesar Chavez and William O’Douglas— whose work influenced the levers of power inside the White Houses of John Kennedy, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson and Richard Nixon with extraordinary results. This is not only a majestic work of history; it is an urgent call for our time." — Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
"A work of stunning erudition by one of our most brilliant chroniclers of the American past. By meticulously detailing how courageous activists sparked an environmental revolution that fueled the legislative imaginations of three very different presidents, Douglas Brinkley also renders a vivid portrait of the endangered species of bipartisan cooperation in the effort to save our planet. In this magisterial account, Brinkley proves himself a man for all seasons: he springs into action and refuses to take the summer off in the desperate drive to prevent our fall into an even more destructive winter of environmental discontent." — Michael Eric Dyson, author of Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America
"Beginning with The Wilderness Warrior, his sweeping book on Theodore Roosevelt and the conservation movement, Doug Brinkley has been our foremost chronicler of how presidents shape our environmental policy. In this very important and timely book, filled with fascinating historical revelations, Brinkley describes how three presidents of the Long Sixties embraced the wave of environmental concerns unleashed by Rachel Carson's great work. The sense of common stewardship provides great lessons for today's partisan and poisonous political discourse." — Walter Isaacson
"In his Silent Spring Revolution, Douglas Brinkley provides an urgently-needed history of the American environmental movement, and the prophetic and courageous men and women who led it. Their gripping story is both a warning and a promise of what might still be possible as the struggle for environmental sustainability reaches a crisis point. Every American should read it, and ponder why it is that the bipartisan gains of the recent past seem so tragically out of reach today." — Jane Mayer, Chief Washington Correspondent, The New Yorker Magazine, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
"Silent Spring Revolution is a luminous history of the environmental movement that emerged in the tumult of the 1960s. Brinkley's deft mosaic of powerful forces and powerful men puts the main spotlight on a woman, Rachel Carson. Soft-spoken but fearless, she galvanized an enduring cause by reminding us that the Earth is a natural mansion . . . our living home . . . and we abuse it at our peril." — William Souder, author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson
"If Douglas Brinkley writes it, I will read it. With Silent Spring Revolution, he hits another homerun: an irresistible tale of courage in the face of stubborn, dangerous ignorance and staggering arrogance, peppered with some of the most unforgettable names in history. I was swept up from page one." — Candice Millard
"Even as it vanishes under concrete and asphalt, wilderness keeps an emotional hold on the collective American heart. Douglas Brinkley’s rich and illuminating history of the modern environmental movement shows how tenacious dreamers battled against all odds to save some of our most treasured wild places. It is both a wonder, and a timely inspiration." — Carl Hiaasen
“In Silent Spring Revolution, Douglas Brinkley animates a vibrant history of a passionate, persevering, and spirited community of people who shared a relentless eye toward justice for all. . . . Brinkley shows us through his incomparable rigor as a historian why this era . . . has brought us to a deeper understanding of why social justice and climate justice are intrinsically tied to planetary health and survival. [This] is a courageous book about courageous people that will inspire readers to find their own brave acts on behalf of the Earth. . . . I was mesmerized." — Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge and Writer-in-Residence at Harvard Divinity School
"A panoramic history of environmental politics from 1960 to 1973. . . . Silent Spring Revolution also reads as a paean to the individuals, movements, and politicians who saw federal intervention as the necessary solution to address the myriad environmental crises triggered by the modern industrial system. Overall, Silent Spring Revolution is an impassioned narrative that transports readers to a different, more optimistic world of popular support for eco-awareness and collective action. It is a book that sticks with you.” — Matthew Dallek, Washington Post
“Monumental research…Historian Douglas Brinkley’s Silent Spring Revolution is so important. It’s an inspirational tone, one that shows how a few dedicated people can take the status quo and create meaningful change.” — Curt Schieier, Minneapolis Star Tribune
DECEMBER 2022 - AudioFile
This audiobook is a history of the environmental movement in America 1950-1973—from just before the publication of SILENT SPRING, by Rachel Carson, to just after the first Earth Day in April 1970. It also is a collective biography of influential figures in that movement, including Carson, William O. Douglas, John F. Kennedy, Coretta Scott King, and others. Stephen Graybill delivers a solid narration. His even tone carries listeners through the author’s occasionally tedious attention to detail. He sets off quoted material—mostly from publications—with slight pauses that act as oral quotation marks. The author breaks chapters into smaller parts, which also help listeners absorb the message. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-11-08
Brinkley continues his cycles of histories in which presidents engage with the environment.
The great presidential conservationist, of course, was Theodore Roosevelt, subject of Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior. Rightful Heritage chronicled “FDR’s enthusiasm for preserving treasured landscapes in every state.” Here, the author charts the transformation of conservation into environmentalism, a change of understanding and emphasis that, in his view, owes disproportionately to popular books by Rachel Carson. Silent Spring inspired a campaign to reduce the use of the toxic pesticides that were entering the food chain and killing birds by the millions, and Carson’s works were favorites in the Kennedy White House. As Brinkley relates, when Lyndon Johnson came into office, he took action a step further. While his disastrous policies in Vietnam dragged his Great Society program down, Johnson got some important things done, drawing on the talents of environmental researchers who “were elevated as indispensable first responders rushing to save nothing less than the future of the United States.” Considering the Great Society a “bookend” of FDR’s New Deal, Brinkley also documents the considerable resistance to these environmental reforms on the part of industry, so that, when Richard Nixon arrived in the White House, he had to balance two opposing impulses: to let business and its right-wing think tanks have their way or to push through environmental legislation. He allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to come into being while cautioning its director that environmentalists were “a bunch of commie pinko queers.” Despite his many failures, Nixon got things done, too. (Who knew that he had “a soft spot in his heart for whales”?) Still, as this readable but overlong history documents, it was Carson who merits most of the credit, along with her Kennedy/Johnson Cabinet member Stuart Udall, “the most successful interior secretary in American history.”
A solid addition to the literature at the intersection of environmentalism and politics.
