RACHEL CARSON: A Crusading Environmentalist Book-of-the-Month-Club Flyer. Excerpts in THE NEW YORKER earned SILENT SPRING a ready audience. On publication day, September 27, 1962, the advance sales of SILENT SPRING totaled 40,000 copies and another 150,000 copies were sent to the Book-of-the-Month-Club. According to PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY the 25th anniversary issue of 1987 sold over half a million copies in paperback. Publisher Houghton Mifflin has brought out 50,000 copies for the centennial of Carson's birth in 2007.