Rachel Carson: The Sea Trilogy

Appearing for the first time in a single volume are environmentalist Carson’s first three books, Under the Sea-Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1955), whose popularity set the stage for her epoch-making Silent Spring. Carson’s genius for synthesizing scientific data and balancing expository passages with beautiful, emotive language carries the layperson from the primordial past to the current moment, fathoming the ocean’s mysterious depths or beachcombing along their encircling tidal zones, the theater of our own “dim, ancestral beginnings.” The science may have aged somewhat, but books’ endless curiosity and sense of wonder feel fresh and persuasive, and one must ponder (as biologist Sandra Steingraber does in her thoughtful introduction) how stirringly Carson might have written about the current plight of our seas and planet.