“Silent Spring” was only one of many such polemics, but it is the one that got read. This is an important point. All sorts of people were warning of potential dangers of synthetic chemicals, the science of which was only vaguely understood at the time.
Six months before “Silent Spring,” Knopf published “Our Synthetic Environment,” about chemical toxicity in food and the environment. It sank like a rock.
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We hear often enough of some supposedly great orator that, “Well, Hitler gave great speeches, too!” as we should.
We hear less often than we need to that a fine prose style is also NOT an indicator of either personal holiness or factual accuracy.
