In the decade that began with the publication in 1941 of Under the Sea-Wind, Carson’s lyrical study of life in the open sea, and ended with the appearance of The Sea Around Us in 1951, Carson produced some of her most distinguished writing. The latter book, a monumental synthesis of the science of oceanography, catapulted her to international fame, provided a measure of fortune, and enabled her to leave the government and devote herself to her writing.
Reticent at first about speaking in public, Carson eventually grew more self-assured in her role as public figure and used these occasions to promote natural history as a way of understanding the world. Her major themes – the timelessness of the earth, the constancy of its processes, and the mystery of life – are found over and over in the body of her writing, but they had a special freshness and intimacy when Carson spoke them aloud. Carson also used the opportunities offered by her many awards to speak out against the iconoclasm of science, and to urge the commonality of values shared by all those who endeavored to unfold the wonders of nature.
In 1952, Carson resigned from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. No longer encumbered by government restrictions, she began to express openly her views on the politics of conservation and spoke out too for wilderness preservation.
Two of the selections in Part Two include references to the anxieties of life in the atomic age and to Carson’s concern that with the atom bomb humankind had achieved the power to alter the natural world, even to destroy it. It was a truth which ultimately impelled her choice of subjects and lay at the heart of her anger at our despoiling arrogance.