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The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise
Simon and Schuster
March 2006
464 pages
ISBN: 0743251059
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Political
The Everglades was once reviled as a liquid wasteland, and
Americans dreamed of draining it. Now it is revered as a
national treasure, and Americans have launched the largest
environmental project in history to try to save it. The
Swamp is the stunning story of the destruction and possible
resurrection of the Everglades, the saga of man's abuse of
nature in southern Florida and his unprecedented efforts to
make amends. Michael Grunwald, a prize-winning national
reporter for The Washington Post, takes readers on a
riveting journey from the Ice Ages to the present,
illuminating the natural, social and political history of
one of America's most beguiling but least understood patches
of land. The Everglades was America's last frontier, a wild country
long after the West was won. Grunwald chronicles how a
series of visionaries tried to drain and "reclaim" it, and
how Mother Nature refused to bend to their will; in the most
harrowing tale, a 1928 hurricane drowned 2,500 people in the
Everglades. But the Army Corps of Engineers finally tamed
the beast with levees and canals, converting half the Everglades into
sprawling suburbs and sugar plantations. And though the
southern Everglades was preserved as a national park, it
soon deteriorated into an ecological mess. The River of
Grass stopped flowing, and 90 percent of its wading birds
vanished. Now America wants its swamp back. Grunwald shows how a new
breed of visionaries transformed Everglades politics,
producing the $8 billion rescue plan. That plan is already
the blueprint for a new worldwide era of ecosystem
restoration. And this book is a cautionary tale for that
era. Through gripping narrative and dogged reporting,
Grunwald shows how the Everglades is still threatened by the
same hubris, greed and well-intentioned folly that led to
its decline.
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