Chapter 1
Rachel Carson describes a town that once was pristine and harmonious, but now is ravaged with death and misfortunes. The story is fictional, but has attributable scenarios to various towns in America over the years related to pollution and human interference of the environment.

Chapter 2
She gives a good introduction to the use of pesticides and the causes of problems that pesticides account for in the United States. You also get a good sense of history with respect to bugs and why people have intervened in this relationship of crops and insects.

Chapter 3
Carson describes the contamination of humans to harsh chemicals in this chapter. She also goes into detail about specific chemicals and their properties explaining the damage that they can cause.

Chapter 4
In this chapter, water and water sources are described as far as how they are affected by pesticides. She presents water as a fundamental natural resource and describes the path of chemical contamination from a simple microorganism, to fish, all the way to human consumption.

Chapter 5
This chapter deals with soil, talking about how it is made up from both organic and non organic material. Plants and vegetation needs soil to grow and contamination of this fundamental substance can throw off the entire cycle of the system itself.

Chapter 6
This chapter describes plants and how weed killers and herbicides affect them. Humans depend on plants in the big scheme of things and she explains that although humans try to control certain sagebrush while growing crops, grass, etc, that they are actually hurting plants that were not meant to be. She explains various alternatives to using these harsh methods to control weeds, etc.

Chapter 7
"Needless Havoc" was described in this chapter and is decided as massive spraying of insecticides to kill target insects but which kills a variety of life in its path. She gives an example of the Japanese beetle in the Midwest where massive spraying was done which "needlessly" killed huge numbers of wildlife.

Chapter 8
This chapter talks about birds and how they are killed and effected by mass spraying operations since birds directly eat plants and insects. She talks specifically about Dutch elm disease with respect to DDT because many birds were killed in this process without the success of DDT to stop the elm disease significantly at all.

Chapter 9
A description of efforts in Canada to stop the spruce budworm that was threatening forests. However all river life was effected as a result. A massive killing of salmon took place when this effort to kill the budworm took place. She gave examples of alternatives that would have prevented this situation: natural parasites of the insect or introduction of a natural disease to the insect.

Chapter 10
This chapter discusses aerial campaigns against the gypsy moth. Massive spraying of insecticides took place from airplanes, however the effect of this was not good. It effected farms and produce that were in harms way as well as Innocent bystanders who had to endure the spraying as well. This event seems to be one of the reasons people have changed their viewpoints on insecticide spraying methods.

Chapter 11
This chapter discusses the individuals responsibility and the lack of understanding people have about pesticides and chemicals in their own homes. A lot of the contamination comes from small amounts from individuals as well. People are encouraged to use these chemicals and are not made aware of the detrimental effects.

Chapter 12
This chapter talks about the human body and how poisons and chemicals effect its "ecology." Carson discusses diseases and compares them to that of human introduced chemical and radiation problems that increase risk and Public Health issues that already exist.

Chapter 13
Carson discusses cells in this chapter with respect to how chemicals can disrupt and manipulate cell structure and function in living organisms. This can cause mutation, deletion, etc, in cells that are vital to our existence. She links cancer and other mutations to this kind of damage caused by chemicals.

Chapter 14
Carson discusses the link between cancer and insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides that are used in our environment. Adaptation and evolution happens very slowly, however with the introduction of chemicals that cause cell mutation, etc, this process must happen relatively rapidly. It is for this reason that cancer causing effects are discussed.

Chapter 15
This chapter discusses how nature has the ability to "fight back" when chemicals are introduced into the environment. Nature already has certain insecticides in place and introducing synthetic ones proves to not always be successful. Insects have the ability to quickly develop resistance to certain chemicals. She suggests scientists take note of these natural controls to deal with pests, insects, and other interferences.

Chapter 16
This chapter discusses the danger of insects developing select resistance to insecticides. The problem with insecticides is that not only do they kill the target but also possibly its natural predetor. If this is proven to be the case and the target insect develops a resistance to the chemical being used, the problem of control might turn into an ''avalanche" like issue.

Chapter 17
Carson concludes the book with the notion of alternative methods to chemical control of our environment. We do not know the long term effects or overall outcome of what we are injecting into our world.