8vo. Original green cloth gilt; dust jacket (light rubbing to spine).

FIRST EDITION. Beginning in the late 1940s environmentalist and author Rachel Carson began to turn her attention to the effect of pesticide use on the environment. Following publication in The Boston Herald of a letter describing a mass death of birds after a nearby crop was sprayed with the chemical pesticide DDT, Carson set to work on an expose of the effect of toxic chemicals on the environment. The resulting work, Silent Spring, describes the effects of chemical pesticides not only on the environment but also on humans and animal life, and is credited with kickstarting the modern environmental movement.