Craig Waddell presents essays investigating Rachel Carson s influential 1962 book, "Silent Spring." In his foreword, Paul Brooks, Carson s editor at Houghton Mifflin, describes the process that resulted in "Silent Spring." In an afterword, Linda Lear, Carson s recent biographer, recalls the end of Carson s life and outlines the attention that Carson s book and Carson herself received from scholars and biographers, attention that focused so minutely on her life that it detracted from a focus on her work. The foreword by Brooks and the afterword by Lear frame this exploration within the...

In this now classic biography, reissued in a new edition for the 150th anniversary of Beatrix Potter's birth, Linda Lear offers the astonishing portrait of an extraordinary woman who gave us some of the most beloved children's books of all time. Potter found freedom from her conventional Victorian upbringing in the countryside. Nature inspired her imagination as an artist and scientific illustrator, but "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" brought her fame, financial success, and the promise of happiness when she fell in love with her editor Norman Warne. After his tragic and untimely death, Potter...