| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Priscilla Coit Murphy. What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring. (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book.) Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2005. Pp. xvi, 254. $34.95.
Priscilla Coit Murphy's study is a "biography of a book" that is one of the classics of environmental writing in American history. On one level Murphy traces "the genesis and conduct of the public debate around Silent Spring" (p. 3), but her goal is also to understand the importance of the book form itself and specifically what difference it made that "Silent Spring's message came in book form" (p. 17).	1
Rachel Carson hoped that her book could accomplish four major goals: to inform people about the damage caused by pesticides; to expand awareness of the broader problem of humans' use and misuse of the natural world; to change public attitudes about the natural world and specifically that nature required balance; and, finally, to challenge the existing relationships among chemical companies, the government, and university scientists that allowed for the degradation of the environment. In short, Carson sought to issue a "call to action based on a carefully delineated explanation of the threat—current and future—of damage to life by misuse of pesticides" (p. 8) and to reestablish independent regulatory authority by the government of the chemical industry.	. . .

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