University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

In choosing this book, I bestow a small honor to an outstanding biologist who was born in Pennsylvania. Rachel Carson became deeply concerned about the damage human society was inflicting on the environment at a time when there was little public consciousness of such issues. “There would be no peace for me if I kept silent,” she wrote to a friend. By writing this book, she contributed greatly to the birth of the modern environmental movement and raised awareness about the effects of human activity on other living things. Silent Spring was a great inspiration to me, as it was to people around the world.

In the words of my mother, “Que os sons da vida, com seus cânticos, trinados e zumbidos, se façam música para os nossos ouvidos, em um mundo novo, redimido pela consciência de que a obra do homem precisa conviver em harmonia com a natureza. Essa foi a luta de Rachel Carson. Essa é a nossa luta." (Leny M. De Moraes)

"The sounds of life, with its songs, chirps and buzzes, are music to our ears, in a new world, redeemed by the understanding that the ways of mankind must be in harmony with nature. This was Rachel Carson’s flight." This is our flight. (Leny M. De Moraes)