Amazon Prime Free Trial
FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button and confirm your Prime free trial.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited FREE Prime delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-22% $13.19$13.19
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$8.17$8.17
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Vivé Liber Books LLC
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Audible sample
Follow the authors
OK
Under the Sea-Wind (Penguin Classics) Paperback – April 3, 2007
Purchase options and add-ons
Celebrating the mystery and beauty of birds and sea creatures in their natural habitat, Under the Sea-Wind—Rachel Carson’s first book and her personal favorite—is the early masterwork of one of America’s greatest nature writers. Evoking the special mystery and beauty of the shore and the open sea—its limitless vistas and twilight depths—Carson’s astonishingly intimate, unforgettable portrait captures the delicate negotiations of an ingeniously calibrated ecology.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Classics
- Publication dateApril 3, 2007
- Dimensions0.6 x 5.1 x 7.7 inches
- ISBN-100143104969
- ISBN-13978-0143104964
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
Review
About the Author
Linda Lear (introducer) is an environmental historian and biographer and the author of the prize-winning study Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature and Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature.
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Classics; Revised ed. edition (April 3, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0143104969
- ISBN-13 : 978-0143104964
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 0.6 x 5.1 x 7.7 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #502,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #149 in Marine Biology (Books)
- #226 in Marine Life
- #983 in Ecology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Linda Lear is an environmental historian and the author of two prize-winning biographies: Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (2009) and Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature (2007). She has written the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (2012) and edited an anthology of Carson's unpublished writing, Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1998). She maintains www.rachelcarson.org. Linda lives in Bethesda, Maryland and Charleston, South Carolina.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) spent most of her professional life as a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By the late 1950s, she had written three lyrical, popular books about the sea, including the bestselling The Sea Around Us, and had become the most respected science writer in America. She completed Silent Spring against formidable personal odds, and with it shaped a powerful social movement that has altered the course of history.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book easy to read and enjoyable. They appreciate the lovely prose and poetic style. The book paints a fascinating picture of sea life, with an anthropological treatment of three sea creatures. It drives home the importance of nature and our well-being, and is described as an inspiration and evocative nature book.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book easy to read and enjoyable. They appreciate the author's elegant vocabulary and readable prose style. The book is sturdy and gets better with each re-reading. It provides informative content while being lovely to read.
"...I have carried with me for most of my life and it only gets better with each rereading...." Read more
"...This is such a juicy book. Each creature she gives us, from whale to worm, is treated with a personal glee that endears them to us...." Read more
"What a wonderful book! Rachel Carson delights us with a tale of the creatures that live at the edge of the sea...." Read more
"...As an literary book, these in fact make the book very much more readable. Reading it is like watching a Discovery channel documentary...." Read more
Customers appreciate the writing quality of the book. They find the prose lovely, poetic, and engaging. The descriptions of weather give readers a sense of being there. Readers also mention the creative characterization and well-structured prose. The illustrations are fantastic, and the author writes excellent English.
"...The text follows a continual narrative, spotlighting various animals as they go about their lives in a challenging environment...." Read more
"...like an angel about the world of the mundane; simply, in gorgeously structured, shiny prose and all the while informed by her own massive research...." Read more
"...Her writing is beautiful, poetic, and moves us to care about the environment." Read more
"...These illustrations are fine, but there are very few of them (I am not sure if the Penguin edition even includes all of the original Frech works)...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and informative. They appreciate the natural history of life in the sea and shore, as well as the touching and broad-ranging story of many sea creatures. The characterization brings ecology into an engaging reading experience, following the lives and stories of various animals of varying species as they interact with the sea. The book makes them see nature in a different light than they are used to.
"...In this way she paints a picture of life in the sea; the ceaseless dance of predator and prey, the changing flow of currents, the never ending..." Read more
"...Her love for the sea and its shores, so beautifully written in her first three books, is transformed into political awareness and activism...." Read more
"...The interaction of all the birds, animals and sea life is fascinating...." Read more
"...Carson paints a touching and broad-ranging story of many sea creatures - birds, fish, crabs, eels, tracing many of the stories from the viewpoint of..." Read more
Customers find the book's nature content engaging and inspiring. They describe it as an interesting read with a rare blend of science and poetry that opens their hearts and minds to appreciate nature.
"...Not so much a science book, even though the science therein is accurate, but more of an intimate look into the lives of the fish, birds and mammals..." Read more
"...beautifully written in her first three books, is transformed into political awareness and activism. It's a good and lovely thing to witness...." Read more
"...Her writing is beautiful, poetic, and moves us to care about the environment." Read more
"...them human names and describe their feelings -- is also very unique in nature books...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2014Reading Rachel Carson's first book, "Under the Sea Wind" (1941), is like reading poetry. Not so much a science book, even though the science therein is accurate, but more of an intimate look into the lives of the fish, birds and mammals that live in and around the sea. The text follows a continual narrative, spotlighting various animals as they go about their lives in a challenging environment. Carson's narrative shows that each animal is part a a larger picture, one that shows the endless interplay between species and how life and the environment form a complex Biosphere that has existed for eons. Her beautiful passages describing the weather give the reader a feeling of really being there in the wind, rain and snow. Watch an aerial duel between an Osprey and a Bald Eagle as they fight for possession of a just caught fish. Follow a school of Mullet as they navigate the sea currents to their breeding grounds. But it's not only fish and birds that struggle for life, man, too, plays a part in the modern sea. Whole communities of fishermen and their families depend on the ocean for food and material gain. You'll be with them as they cast their nets over the water to catch mullets by the thousands. For me Carson's writing style was reminiscent of the nature stories written by Canadian poet Charles G D Roberts (*). While Roberts's stories were inspired by his life growing up in a hunting and farming community in the back-woods of Canada, Carson's "Under the Sea Wind" is based on her lifetime of observation and knowledge of the natural world. To help the reader follow the various animal characters through their lives the author gave each one a "name", that name might be part of the animals "scientific name" or taken from Native American (Inuit) lore. With moving prose Carson follows an Atlantic mackerel from egg to adult, tracing its movement down the coast from the spawning grounds, just south of Rhode Island, where it hatched. In this way she paints a picture of life in the sea; the ceaseless dance of predator and prey, the changing flow of currents, the never ending march of the seasons. Carson's knowledge, of the sea and its many creatures, the sky and the countless birds that follow the rugged coastline from winter to summer, is nothing less than astounding. "Under the Sea Wind" is book 1 of Rachel Carson's "Sea Trilogy" (**) and all three books are considered to be one of the most "Definitive works of American nature writing" to come along in decades. This edition closes with a short biography of Carson complete with archival photos from her life. The reader should keep in mind that this book was written in the early part of the 20th Century and while the science was up to date in 1941 moderne research and observations may have altered some of Carson's conclusions on animal behavior but on the whole the science remains valid to this day. For me this timeless story was one that I have carried with me for most of my life and it only gets better with each rereading. I had no technical or formatting problems with this Kindle edition but I did notice an unfortunate "publisher omission". The lovely illustrations by nature artists Howard Frech who's sketches and line-drawings graced the first edition and some later editions, are all missing. Too bad that Open Road Media did not take that extra step to give the reader a truly memorable reading experience. That being said, I still highly recommend this book to nature lovers everywhere.
Last Ranger
(*) see my review of Robert's "Hoof and Claw".
(**) Book 2: The Sea Around Us (1951) and Book 3: Edge of the Sea (1955).
- Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2012I had never heard of marine zoologist Rachel Carson. I bought her book 'On The Edge Of The Sea' in a 2nd hand bookshop in a bunch of other random Natural History because I liked the cover. After OTEOTS I read 'The Sea Around Us', and most recently 'Under the Sea Wind', the subject of this review.
As with both her other books, Ms Carson's intelligence and heart leave glittering wakes through this overview of mid-twentieth century research on the sea, particularly its animal life. This is such a juicy book. Each creature she gives us, from whale to worm, is treated with a personal glee that endears them to us. She makes small stories of each of their singular lives. I now care personally about annelid worms. Who knew?
Drawing back from the individual she then illuminates the ways in which each life is dependent on the whole, and the whole on each life. She writes like an angel about the world of the mundane; simply, in gorgeously structured, shiny prose and all the while informed by her own massive research. Her love for her subjects leads the way, and refreshes itself at every turn. Her sense of detail is immersive, and her sensibility of the marvel of forms is catching.
There is something other than her brilliance that struck me about the above three books. Because Rachel Carson was writing in the years just before the spread of environmentalism, they are touchingly non-political in tone; no warnings, no fretting. They were followed by her last book, the enormously influential 'Silent Spring', a warning text that documents the ways in which the sea was suffering from human activity. Her love for the sea and its shores, so beautifully written in her first three books, is transformed into political awareness and activism. It's a good and lovely thing to witness. This author died in 1964 so we only have four books to fall in love with. Shame.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2016What a wonderful book! Rachel Carson delights us with a tale of the creatures that live at the edge of the sea. The interaction of all the birds, animals and sea life is fascinating. There is so much going on every minute of every day - so much more than a casual observer of the seaside would ever notice. Ms. Carson makes us aware of the dependence all creatures have upon one another and how human interference can have a negative impact on nature. Her writing is beautiful, poetic, and moves us to care about the environment.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2010This is a very unusual nature book. Most nature books are based on first-hand experience and observations (e.g. see Henry David Thoreau, Edward Abbey, Robert Finch's books). While Rachel Carson certainly studied and observed the animals she describes in this book, she did not dive under the sea, thus a lot of the narrative is based on imagination (educated imagination, no doubt). The personification of the animals -- to give them human names and describe their feelings -- is also very unique in nature books. Nonetheless, these do not detract from the scientific accuracies of Carson's descriptions. As an literary book, these in fact make the book very much more readable. Reading it is like watching a Discovery channel documentary.
I deduct one star not because of the book itself, but because of this Penguin edition. I believe there is another edition of the book with illustrations by Bob Hines, I think those illustrations are fantastic. This book contains the illustrations by Howard Frech, the same as the first edition. These illustrations are fine, but there are very few of them (I am not sure if the Penguin edition even includes all of the original Frech works). The edition with Bob Hines' illustrations are infinitely more fun to read, why did Penguin not use those? Actually, why not use both??
- Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2022We read our old one so much we had to get a new one. A great book on nature for children.
Top reviews from other countries
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on August 20, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Rachael Carson a “saint” of the environmental movement
Rachael Carson’s first book where she interweaves several life stories of natural creatures so they read like a good book or novel. A wonderful book that I want my grandchildren to read or have read to them., under the sea wind should be in everyone’s library to read over or use as a source almost like a textbook!
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in India on August 13, 2020
3.0 out of 5 stars Behavior shore birds and fishes
The writes about north American shore birds and fish behavior. Though the author writes beautifully, the whole narration is alien to people of our region.
-
Carl WolfReviewed in Germany on July 26, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars Under the Sea-Wind
Tier in, am und über das Meer werden von Rachel Carson begleitet. Sie beschreibt die Umwelt die Tiere als ob sie in nächste Nähe dabei war.
Gruß aus sonnige Franken!!
Carl
- NiLoReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2014
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Beautiful, well written prose. The illustrations add to the pleasure
- Jeffery E. CarterReviewed in Canada on December 19, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Engrossing!