The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise [Paperback]

Michael Grunwald (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 27, 2007

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.

Michael Grunwald is a reporter at The Washington Post. He has won the George Polk Award for national reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting, and many other awards. He lives in Miami with his wife, Cristina Dominguez.

Visit his website at www.michaelgrunwald.com.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Washington Post reporter Grunwald brings the zeal of his profession—and the skill that won him a Society of Environmental Journalists Award in 2003—to this enthralling story of "the river of grass" that starry-eyed social engineers and greedy developers have diverted, drained and exploited for more than a century. In 1838, fewer than 50 white people lived in south Florida, and the Everglades was seen as a vast and useless bog. By the turn of this century, more than seven million people lived there (and 40 million tourists visited annually). Escalating demands of new residents after WWII were sapping the Everglades of its water and decimating the shrinking swamp's wildlife. But in a remarkable political and environmental turnaround, chronicled here with a Washington insider's savvy, Republicans and Democrats came together in 2000 to launch the largest ecosystem restoration project in America's history. This detailed account doesn't shortchange the environmental story—including an account of the senseless fowl hunts that provoked abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1877 broadside "Protect the Birds." But Grunwald's emphasis on the role politics played in first despoiling and now reclaiming the Everglades gives this important book remarkable heft. 18 pages of b&w photos; 7 maps. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

The Swamp emerged from a four-part series that Grunwald wrote for the Washington Post in 2002, which focused on the $8 billion plan to restore the Everglades. From there, Grunwald fleshed out the Everglades's contested history. Critics laud The Swamp as an informative, beautifully researched and written tale that links social, political, and environmental history to current events. Many commented on Grunwald's finesse in describing the dreamers and schemers who sold Florida swampland, the engineers who tried to buck nature's forces. A few thought that Grunwald paid too little attention to current controversies, did not adequately explain today's Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, and assumed a condition of ecological purity to pre-European contact Florida. These are minor complaints; Grunwald's unbiased story will provoke outrage over our squandered "river of grass."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (March 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743251075
• ISBN-13: 978-0743251075
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Natural Resources
  • #83 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Environmental Science

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Next Great American Classic February 26, 2006

By A grateful reader

Format:Hardcover

You don't have to live in Florida or be all that interested in the environment to appreciate what Michael Grunwald has accomplished with this terrific book. The Swamp is a universal American tale, the struggle between man and nature, the power of pride and the price of hubris. It reads like a novel but the amazing part is how true it is. The Indian fighters and the ecologists, the developers and the politicians, the army engineers and the sugar industrialists make up an eclectic and compelling cast of characters, some idealistic, many foolish, all brought to life by Grunwald's vivid prose. But the Everglades are the main protagonist and a multifaceted one at that, forever surprising and enduring. No one has written a book that captures the development of America quite like this in many years. And if you do live in Florida or find the environment to be important, then you absolutely, positively must read this book.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Swamp November 8, 2006

By Dana Stabenow VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This history of how first we dried out the Everglades and are now desperately trying to wet it down again to a reasonable facsimile of its former self reads like a thriller. Grunwald has a gift for simile ("It had the panoramic sweep of a desert, except flooded, or a tundra, except melted, or a wheat field, except wild.") and a good reporter's nose for the political boondoggling, pork bellying and backroom dealing that form the Everglades' prime crops, including what really happened in Florida in the 2000 election, over which I am still gasping. Grunwald is an advocate for restoration, no question, but his eye is clear, his pen is sharp and he takes no prisoners. A must read for anyone who likes well-crafted historical epics.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Heroes, Villians & still a dying Jewel August 13, 2006

By R. D'Alessandro III

Format:Hardcover

My job touches not so peripherally on Everglades National Park, one of the crown jewels of the U.S. national park system, so I was eager to read this highly recommended summary of the history of the Everglades by Washington Post report Mike Grunwald. Calling this book a summary doesn't do it justice - it's comprehensive without being overly long, it's an excellent read without being too journalistic, its coverage of the issue is broad without being too shallow, and it inflames while also moderating the reasons why, in 2006, the Everglades is still dying, because of our insatiable greed and need for more, more, more - water, land, money, power. I picked up this book a couple months back, connecting with the topic on a professional level, but then as I approached the end of the book, sad news from Florida brought me unexpectedly in personal contact with one of the millions of human stories that pervade the Everglades, Florida, and the politics of paradise, the subtitle of this book - the passing of my aunt, whose husband and sons were some of those folks who greatly enjoyed being swamp rats, hunting, fishing and airboating through the river of grass. Speaking with an uncle who remembers the wilderness that used to be the Everglades 40-50 years ago, we talked about the daily rains that used to come every afternoon, like clockwork, around 4-5pm each day in southern Florida. This book talks about silting of estuaries, muddy waters and phosphorous deposits in the great Lake Okeechobee, depleted water tables, red tides killing endangered or threatened charismatic species like the manatee and dolphins and how the Army Corps of Engineers has falled to figure out 'it's the environment, stupid.' As we walked under a beautiful blue sky, in a Palm Beach county cemetary that hasn't seen water in too long a time, my uncle remarked that the daily rains that I had reminisced about have been AWOL for the past four years. Something is still very wrong in The Swamp, and while this book spells out what it is, we should reflect on the avarice in our cold hearts that continues to plunder the only home we have, and be moved to renewed action to restore, as reasonably as possible given our wide footprint on the land, this dying jewel. For an excellent understanding of what's happened, and happening, to the Everglades, READ THIS BOOK.