"For all at last returns to the sea — to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end."
~ Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964)
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's seminal work Uncle Tom's Cabin drove a nail into the institution of slavery, helping to significantly cripple and eventually curtail the cruel practice.
Fifty-four years later, Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle shed light on the grisly secrets of U.S. meat production in the same way, leading to a revolution of standards for production, processing, and distribution of food.
And sixty years after Upton Sinclair, another author managed to awaken the nation (and the world) in a single volume: Silent Spring. In it, marine biologist Rachel Carson predicts the death of the natural world, caused in large part by the "miracle" pesticide DDT, and the greedy chemical industry that relentlessly promoted it
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