Douglas Brinkley Presents: Silent Spring Revolution

The North Shore Land Alliance and Friends of the Bay were pleased to bring New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley to Oyster Bay to discuss his latest book Silent Spring Revolution.

The book chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has received seven honorary doctorates in American Studies. Six of his books were named NY Times “Notable

Books of the Year” and seven became NY Times bestsellers.

Other revered works include:

•The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 2007, which received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award

• Biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Walter Cronkite

• American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race which received the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

•The Nixon Tapes, 2016, which won the Arthur S. Link – Warren F. Kuehl Prize.

•He also received a Grammy Award in 2017 as co-producer of Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom (Best Jazz Ensemble). In 2021, the Garden Club of

America awarded Brinkley the Frances K. Hutchison Medal for his distinguished service to conservation efforts.

With the United States grappling with climate change and resource exhaustion, Douglas Brinkley’s meticulously researched and deftly written Silent Spring Revolution reminds us that a new generation of 21st-century environmentalists can (and must) save the planet from ruin.

The event was held on April 19, at the Oyster Bay Town Hall, 54 Audrey Avenue.