Rachel Carson and Her Sisters: Extraordinary Women Who Have Shaped America's Environmental Movement

摘要

The cover of this book features an iconic image of Rachel Carson. She sits high atop a rock outcrop, searching the sky through a pair of binoculars. The preface notes that this image suggests Carson alone in nature-but only if one does not take into consideration the photographer, Carson's friend and colleague Shirley Briggs. Robert Musil, environmental scholar, former CEO of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and president and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council, has taken on a tricky task. He wants to be sure that Rachel Carson gets all due recognition for jump-starting the modern environmental movement. At the same time he is determined to bring attention to the less obvious contributions to that achievement made by women like Shirley Briggs, an accomplished wildlife artist and editor as well as a photographer. Musil sets out to provide an appreciation of Carson and to present her within the rich context of the women environmentalists who helped blaze the trail for her, as well as the women who have widened, paved, and diversified that trail in her wake. That he succeeds on all counts is a testament to his wide-ranging knowledge of the environmental contributions of individual women naturalists, scientists, and activists from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first.