Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (The Manifesto Series)

Alright! So my next book is a mini novel I had to read for my APES (Advanced Placement Environmental Science super exciting right?) awareness hours. My awareness hours involve learning more about the environment through classes, lectures and other environmental experiences. I understand why we have to do it, but it does seem to take up a lot of my time however, I did get to read an interesting book which is part of Manifesto's Words that Changed the World series. So here is my review of Manifesto's Words that Changed the World, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Characters: Again, like the previous book I reviewed, this book isn't much of a narrative so it has no real "characters".

The Plot: Not many people had ever heard of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. At least not in today's world. But forty years ago in the 1960's and 1970's Rachel Carson was changing the way the world looked at the environment. Starting from Rachel Carson as a child and following her life as she was thrust onto a national stage, this book follows Rachel Carson on her amazing journey to save the world. It offers a personal and chilling glance into Carson's life as she furiously combats the DDT companies while battling her own demons, namely a cancer that would plague her for the last years of her life. This book not only exposes the tactics the companies used to try to keep the American public in the dark, it brings to light the journey all of us must take in some form or another to push away the ignorance and see what is really before our eyes.

What I liked: I have to admit, this Manifesto series is pretty awesome. My word choice is astounding right? Such a high intellectual capacity being displayed by yours truly. I'll be the first to admit while it is not the most beautiful of phrases, it works well enough. What other series takes books that have changed the very fabric of society and gives them to us in a form that can give the average reader a taste of what these books did to change society. While it is probably because I love books so much that this book appealed to me in the first place, any book that looks at literature critically and examines its effect on society is automatically a winner in my eyes. And Rachel Carson's Silent Spring Manifesto special was no exception. It was very well written, as opposed to An Inconvenient Truth, and also offered up hard details. This book was not catered to the masses, rather it catered to a select group. This is a group that would actually pick up this book in the first place - a more intellectual group that was looking for that kind of knowledge in the already. This is different from An Inconvenient Truth because it catered to the masses and as a result fell short because the masses didn't want to read the book and could not relate to it. Manifesto's book did not leave us disappointed. What I loved was the fact that Rachel Carson was the hero. Obviously she was because she actually wrote the book, but for me anytime I see a woman changing the world completely, it is something to be happy about. Rachel Carson completely changed the world of environmental science while battling against death threats and breast cancer, and that makes me feel like anything in the world is possible and that is truly magical. Also, I really liked the format of the book. The authors started out with a basic introduction into Carson's life which really gave you a basic understanding of who she was and how she became the person she was. For me, this is essential in any good book. You can ask my family anytime I read or watch TV, I always want to know the background. It gives life to the book and creates a realism that nothing else can. It drops you right into the characters world and makes you believe as if they are a close family friend and you are watching the characters like you have always known them. Then the book jumps into Carson's journey to writing the book and then the effect Carson had on the world. This kind of format paints you a complete picture that doesn't leave out any information and yet leaves you wanting to know more at the same time.

What I didn't like: Rachel Carson died at the end. A part of me was crushed inside. But like almost all great leaders, few see the fruits of their labor accomplish the goals they were set out to achieve. Perhaps that is the curse of greatness.

Overall: 10 out of 10. This book showed us a world that is not unlike our own, and the parallels that were drawn between our situation and the problems of Rachel Carson's world cannot be missed even on the most absentminded of readers. I am extremely interested in reading more of the Manifesto series and congratulate the authors on a job well done on a fantastic book.

An Inconvenient Truth

Hey everyone! Long time no see! Well I was reminded this morning that it has been almost a month since I last wrote on my blog. School has been keeping me busy, but I'll make it up to you: today I am going to do two blogs on two books: An Inconvenient Truth, and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (Part of the Manifesto Series). Well here we go and I hope you enjoy...An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore.

Characters: Because An Inconvenient Truth is a nonfiction book based off Al Gore's documentary/traveling environmental awareness adventure, their are no main characters.

The Plot: Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is nothing short of a plea to save the environment. Through graphs, polls, interviews and general research, Gore paints a picture of a future in which Earth has been completely depleted and we have let our children down in saving our world. Using his experience as a politician, Gore attempts to convince us that while this problem of global warming may be an inconvenient one, our home is a place worth saving and we cannot allow our children to inherit the problem that we created.

What I liked: I liked that An Inconvenient Truth was an accessible book to the everyday American. Gore created a book that the everyday American could understand and interpret as they wished. The book didn't have a lot of actual words, and the majority of the book was pictures and charts. This makes it easier to read for the everyday individual who doesn't want to read 350 pages of size six font. By making this book accessible, Gore was able to convince a whole new group of people who had potentially never had concerns about the environment, to pick up this book and read about the current state of our world. For me, this struck me as a huge accomplishment. Often times writers create an environmental book that is so complex and unreachable to an everyday person, that it doesn't really get across a point because it is so difficult to understand. The last section of An Inconvenient Truth consisted of information of what we could do as an individual to save the envirnoment which not only gives us something tangible we can latch onto but shows us that it may not be that inconvenient to save the envirnoment anyway. I was surprised by how easy to read the book was for something that was nationally recognized for its impact on the American political system. I would have expected, and I don't think I'm alone in this assumption, that a book that created such a following in the political system would have more to offer than just a few pictures and some graphs. But now I am really getting to what I didn't like so I guess we should just move there.

What I didn't like: This section is where my personal political feelings may come out but I am going to try to be as impartial as possible. First, I don't like that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize because of his slide show, his documentary and his book. While I understand he brought the energy crisis to the attention of the general public, that's not what the Nobel Peace Prize should be about. The Nobel Peace Prize should show the achievements of a scientist and the groundbreaking work they have conducted, and how their work will change the world. For me, Al Gore just copied and pasted the work of others. That doesn't really apply to the book but it created a negative starting point from which the book jumped off of. Then you get into the actual book. When I was looking up Al Gore just to see what else he had done up until this point, there was an accusation that his data was inaccurate, and that his argument was extremely one-sided. While I cannot attest to the first, I can certainly attest to the second: it was extremely one sided. While that is not exactly a bad thing, it is certainly worth noting. The worst part of this book for me though, is the feeling that his work wasn't good enough. For the praise and recognition he received, it was still a list of statistics with an over the top apocalyptic tone. You can ask my parents...I was pretty pro-environment while I was reading, I think they enjoyed how crazy I sounded with my inability to listen to other scientists they told me about. This just emphasizes how one sided the book is: the apocalyptic tone takes you in and eliminates reason from the argument; I was so overwhelmed by the data and the facts presented that I didn't stop to question and analyze where the data was coming from and what it was saying. The book doesn't look at concepts logically, rather it looks at extreme cases and makes it sound as if the world is about to end any second. And for me, that was something that you cannot do as a writer and Nobel Prize winner. Don't get me wrong, I still think we should protect the environment but the hysteria the book seemed to create seemed vastly out of proportion with the problems. Also, the actual writing in An Inconvenient Truth was very poor. There was a lot of "because" and "so this means" and just general bad grammar. I didn't develop a connection with Al Gore and I felt that the actual content of the book, while being more accessible to some readers, actually turned off others, like myself.

Overall: 4 out of 10. I don't understand why Al Gore is a Nobel Prize winner, and the book left a bad taste in my mouth. I am a big believer that nothing is ever as good or as bad as it may seem at first glance: more often than not it is somewhat in the middle. Gore has no concept of working towards the middle. Its his way or the highway and maybe that's the problem with the current environmental situation. Both groups are so adamant that they cannot change their paths (and that the other side should), that nothing really gets done and we are left with a middle that will never be reached.