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201 What Two Books Can (and Cannot) Do Stewart Udall’s The Quiet Crisis and Its Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition che฀ ryl฀knott Priscilla Coit Murphy, in What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, writes: “What a book does . . . can tell us what we use books for, giving us the opportunity to consider . . . whether any other medium would perform the same function or fll the same needs better than, or even as well as, a book.” Murphy provides ample evidence that a book, especially a heavily documented nonfction work of advocacy such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, can galvanize public opinion, even when it is not read by a lot of the people who take action because of it. We could assume that the immediacy of new media such as blogs and instant messaging might have obviated the need for books, particularly for moving people to action regarding a timely political or environmental issue. But Murphy asserts, “Authors in every feld with every purpose, even journalists and public fgures who already have direct access to the media, have continued to resort to books to communicate their messages to the public at large. Moreover, book publishing, far from collapsing with the advent of each new ‘competitor’ medium, has continued to survive and even to flourish.”1 According to Murphy, it is the book (as opposed to the author) that launches social and political movements as it takes on a life of its own in ways the author and publisher could not have foreseen. 202 ฀ cheryl฀knott Silent Spring remains in print. Although new editions with forewords and afterwords by different authors have appeared, the book’s core text has never been revised, because Carson died soon after it was frst published. Comparing later instances of Carson’s own revisions in response to the frst edition’s popular reception and the political, industrial, and practical impact of Carson’s work could have helped round out a discussion of “what we use books for” as those uses adjusted to changing contexts. A book published a year after Carson’s offers an opportunity to begin to do that. In 1963, Stewart Lee Udall, secretary of the interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, published The Quiet Crisis, discussing the degradation of the nation’s natural resources and providing a history of the American conservation movement. It became a New York Times best seller, widely reviewed in the popular press and in scientifc journals. In 1988, Udall, no longer a public offcial, issued an updated twenty-ffth anniversary edition with additional chapters, including one acknowledging Carson’s contribution to the environmental movement. The book did not receive the same notice as the frst edition. The Udall papers at the University of Arizona along with published reviews and notices make it possible to evaluate the publication and reception of the two versions of The Quiet Crisis in an attempt to understand their impact in the differing contexts of environmental science and politics in 1963 and 1988. Stewart Lee Udall Stewart Udall was born in 1920 in St. John’s, Arizona, the town his Mormon grandfather had moved to as a missionary, a few miles from the state’s border with New Mexico. He earned a law degree at the University of Arizona and practiced law in Tucson from 1948 to 1954, when he made a successful run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat and was elected to three terms. After ensuring that Democrats in the state of Arizona would go for John F. Kennedy as their presidential nominee, in 1961 he became the newly elected President Kennedy’s secretary of the interior, from which post he crafted an ambitious environmental protection program as part of Kennedy’s New Frontier. Although Udall had not supported Lyndon Johnson’s bid for the White House in 1960, Johnson kept him on for the duration of his administration . Udall and Lady Bird Johnson collaborated on environmental efforts such as beautifcation, and each had an influence on President Johnson’s policies to protect the environment. Remaining secretary until 1969, Udall oversaw about ffty thousand employees who spent some $800 million annually to discharge the Department of Interior’s duties involving the management of 750 million acres of federal land, including the national park system; the management of natural resources; cartography, particularly involving geological and topographical features; and land reclamation, among other things.2 [18.217.220.114] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...

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