Priscilla Coit Murphy. What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. 288 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-55849476-3.
Reviewed by Elliot King (Loyola College in Maryland)
Published on Jhistory (March, 2008)
A Book Can Change History
is a direct progeny of Silent Spring. (Both Carson and
Gore weathered attacks on their credentials and their accuracy.) If Carson was still alive, perhaps she would have
won a Nobel Peace Prize.
Agenda setting has been one of the most cultivated
and fruitful fields of journalism research. How does a
specific issue climb in public interest, become the subject for spirited public debate, and ultimately lead to policy change? The agenda-setting process is all the more
complex because frequently an issue that suddenly bursts
onto the public agenda has been long simmering among
experts or a narrow community of interested parties.
The question that Priscilla Coit Murphy tackles in
What a Book Can Do is how did it happen? How did
Silent Spring achieve what it did? And what, if any, difference did it make that Silent Spring was a book and not
Of all the many different ways an issue can percolate (primarily) a magazine article, a series of news articles,
up onto the public agenda, there is a deep-seated belief or even a television documentary? What is the unique
that sometimes a book can be the catalyst. In fact, a hand- role books can play in the creation of public controversy
ful of books are credited with, if not changing the course and the setting of the public agenda?
of history or public policy, at least giving history or polAs Murphy notes in the beginning, she did not study
icy a nudge. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Silent Spring because of a particular relationship to the
(1852) is seen as helping to fuel the flame that led to the
Civil War. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) spurred the book or its content. Instead, she wanted to study the recreation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and sponse of other media to the publication of a book. She
inaugurated a regulatory regime still at work today. And, selected Carson’s book, in part, because it was serialized
Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) helped launch in the New Yorker magazine three months prior to its publication as a book, and publication in a magazine insured
the auto safety movement.
that the arguments in Silent Spring would be presented
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring has a hallowed position in more than one medium.
in the pantheon of “books that made a difference.” PubWhat a Book Can Do is thoroughly researched history
lished in 1962, Silent Spring is credited with helping to
of
the
life cycle of a book from its conception through
launch the modern environmental movement. The pubthe
release
of an important report by the President’s Scilic controversy that erupted following its publication led
ence
Advisory
Committee about the issue it discussed to
to banning the use of the pesticide DDT in the United
the release of the paperback version and Carson’s death
States in 1972 and indirectly to the creation of the Enin 1964. Full of well-documented, rich detail, Murphy’s
vironmental Protection Agency in 1970. In many ways,
Al Gore’s documentary film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) book describes how Carson, a popular nature writer and
long-time employee of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
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decided to write a full-length book about the decidedly
unglamorous subject of chemical pesticides. Murphy’s
study describes the original plan for Carson to write an
article for the New Yorker and edit a volume of collected
essays that would be published by Houghton Mifflin,
which had published her previous book.
helped turn Silent Spring into a news story. Suddenly,
the issue had two sides–a development that fit the needs
of the media. As with Unsafe at Any Speed, the industry’s
vigorous attack on Silent Spring in many ways helped elevate it in the public’s and the media’s eye. Eventually,
media coverage climaxed in April 1964, when the newsmagazine “CBS Reports” ran a piece entitled “The Silent
Spring of Rachel Carson.” By that time, pesticides and the
environment were clearly on the national agenda.
Then, it describes the reaction, first, to the magazine
articles in the New Yorker, where Silent Spring was published in three installments, and, then, to the publication
of the book itself. Murphy chronicles the responses of reviewers, the political community, and, perhaps most significantly, the chemical industry. Finally, to the best of
her ability, and this admittedly is a tricky task, she tries
to gauge the reaction of the public itself, or at least the
reading public. Silent Spring was a bestseller, but bestseller lists quantify how many books are purchased, not
necessarily how many of those books are read.
On the other hand, even if Murphy’s discoveries are
not particularly surprising, she has turned a welcome
spotlight on the role a book can play in the generation of
national dialogue as well as the cross-fertilization among
different elements of the media. Despite charges to the
contrary, the media are hardly monolithic, and Murphy
effectively argues that books play a specific role in public
debate of this sort. A book can anchor one side of a controversial argument. If, or when, the other side launches
a counterattack, news results.
On the one hand, what Murphy discovered is not
very surprising. The arguments in Silent Spring gained
widespread attention. Even President John F. Kennedy
was aware of the arguments in Silent Spring as soon as it
was published in the New Yorker. The subsequent publication in book form generated renewed media attention
as newspapers and other periodicals began to review and
comment on it. Since Carson was already a well-known
nature writer, she had a ready-made receptive audience
among garden clubs and others.
Ironically, to some degree, it was helpful that Carson
was sick following the publication of Silent Spring. Because she had to significantly limit her personal appearances, her message largely stayed front and center on the
agenda. Since the messenger could not be the story, the
message was. Over the years, the book has remained in
print and its title has become an iconic term. What a Book
Can Do is well conceived and competently written. Murphy’s short answer to the question what can a book do,
is this–a lot.
Moreover, the response of the chemical industry
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Citation: Elliot King. Review of Murphy, Priscilla Coit, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent
Spring. Jhistory, H-Net Reviews. March, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14273
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