Rachel Carson worked for the US Bureau of Fisheries (which later became the US Fish and Wildlife Service) to support her family during the Great Depression. At the Bureau she quickly became known for her compelling writing and educational radio programs about fish biology. During her time there she published her first book, Under the Sea Wind, and started her second, The Sea Around Us, which made the NY Times Bestseller for a record- setting 86 weeks. In the coming years, her interest turned to conservationism. By the late 1950s the federal government had begun using pesticides widely, sometimes involving aerial spraying of private land. In 1962 she published her best known book, The Silent Spring, which drew attention to how the overuse of harmful pesticides was effecting the bird population. Although Rachel died from complications from cancer at age 56, she came to be known as the “mother of the environmental movements”.