on to the attention of anumber of key people, including the influential science writer William Beebe. Beebe published an excerpt from Under the Sea-Wind in his 1944 compilation The Book of Naturalists, including Carson's work alongside the writings of Aristotle, Audubon, and Thoreau. The poor sales of Under the Sea-Wind made Carson concentrate on her government job. The Bureau of Fisheries merged with the Biological Survey in 1940 and was reborn as the Fish and Wildlife Service. Carson quickly moved up the professional ranks, eventually reaching the position of biologist and chief editor after World War II. One of her postwar assignments, a booklet about National Wildlife Refuges called Conservation in Action, took her back into the field. As part of her research, she visited the Florida Everglades, Parker River in Massachusetts, and Chincoteague Islands in the Chesapeake Bay. After the war, Carson began work on a new book that focussed on oceanography. She was now at liberty to use previously classified government research data on oceanography, which included a number of technical and scientific breakthroughs. As part of her research, she did some undersea diving off the Florida during the summer of 1949. She battled skeptical administrators to arrange a deep-sea cruise to Georges Bank near Nova Scotia aboard the Fish and Wildlifw Service's research vessel, the Albatross III. Entitled The Sea around Us, her book on oceanography was published on July 2, 1951. It was an unexpected success; abridged in Reader's Digest, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club alternative selection and it remained on the New York Times bestseller list for eighty-six weeks. The book brought Carson numerous awards, including the National Book Award and the John Burroughs Medal, as well as honorary doctorates from her alma mater and Oberlin College. Despite her inherent shyness, Carsonbecame a regular on the lecture circuit. Money was no longer the overarching concern...
