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Rachel Carson: The Sea Trilogy

Under the Sea-Wind | The Sea Around Us | The Edge of the Sea More

Edited by Sandra Steingraber

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

Video Rediscovering Rachel Carson: The Oceans, the Climate Crisis, and the “Poet of the Sea”
May 4, 2022

Before her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring catalyzed the environmental movement by alerting the world to the devastating effects of chemical pesticides, Rachel Carson achieved an international reputation as a “poet of the sea,” author of a trilogy of celebrated books about the world’s oceans. Lyrical, deeply personal, and rigorously researched, these three classics of American science and nature writing are now collected in this deluxe Library of America volume.

Under the Sea-Wind (1941), Carson’s stunning debut, offers an intimate account of the intricacies of maritime ecology, traced through a year in the lives of more than a dozen creatures of sea and shore—in particular, a sanderling, a mackerel, and an eel—as they interact amid the enduring ebb and flow of the tides. The fruit of years of study as a scientist for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, Under the Sea-Wind fulfills Carson’s wish “to make the sea and its life as vivid a reality for those who may read the book as it has become for me during the past decade.”

The Sea Around Us (1951)—a National Book Award winner and international best seller—draws on a wealth of oceanographic, meteorological, biological, and historical research to present its subject on a grand, biospheric scale. Carson’s “biography of the sea” reveals many mysteries of the still-unfathomed depths, and an abiding reverence for the ocean as a source of global climate and of life itself.

The Edge of the Sea (1955) explores the small creatures that live where ocean meets land: the shorelines and tidepools accessible to any beachcomber. Part handbook, part hymn to ecological complexity, it is a book that conveys the sense of wonder in nature for which Carson is justly celebrated.

Carson’s Sea Trilogy is presented here with an introduction by writer and biologist Sandra Steingraber, a 16-page portfolio of photographs, a detailed chronology of Carson’s life and career, helpful notes, and an index.

Sandra Steingraber, editor, is senior scientist at the Science & Environmental Health Network and one of America’s leading environmental writers and anti-pollution advocates. Her books include Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment (1997), Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood (2001), and Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis (2011).

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Rachel Carson: The Sea Trilogy is kept in print by a gift to the Guardians of American Letters Fund from The Gould Family Foundation, which also provided project support for the volume.
Table of Contents

Introduction by Sandra Steingraber

Under the Sea Wind
BOOK I: EDGE OF THE SEA
     1 Flood Tide
     2 Spring Flight
     3 Arctic Rendezvous
     4 Summer’s End
     5 Winds Blowing Seaward
BOOK II: THE GULL’S WAY
     6 Migrants of the Spring Sea
     7 Birth of a Mackerel
     8 Hunters of the Plankton
     9 The Harbor
     10 Seaways
     11 Indian Summer of the Sea
     12 Seine Haul
BOOK III: RIVER AND SEA
     13 Journey to the Sea
     14 Winter Haven
     15 Return
Glossary

The Sea Around Us
Preface to the Revised Edition
PART I: MOTHER SEA
     The Gray Beginnings
     The Pattern of the Surface
     The Changing Year
     The Sunless Sea
     Hidden Lands
     The Long Snowfall
     The Birth of an Island
     The Shape of Ancient Seas
Part II: THE RESTLESS SEA
     Wind and Water
     Wind, Sun, and the Spinning of the Earth
     The Moving Tides
Part III: MAN AND THE SEA ABOUT HIM
     The Global Thermostat
     Wealth from the Salt Seas
     The Encircling Sea
Appendix
Suggestions for Further Reading

The Edge of the Sea
Acknowledgments
Preface
     I. The Marginal World
     II. Patterns of Shore Life
     III. The Rocky Shores
     IV. The Rim of Sand
     V. The Coral Coast
     VI. The Enduring Sea
Appendix: Classification

Other Writings
Shad Going Way of the Buffalo
Undersea
Memo to Mrs. Eales on Under the Sea-Wind

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-705-5 770 pages

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N° 352 Library of America Series

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