The Swamp, Michael Grunwald
The Swamp, Michael Grunwald
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The Swamp
The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise

Author: Michael Grunwald

Narrator: Adam Verner

Unabridged: 16 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/16/2016


Synopsis

The Everglades was America's last frontier, a wild country long after the West was won. In this book, Michael 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 The Swamp 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.

About Michael Grunwald

Michael Grunwald is a senior national correspondent for Time magazine. He has garnered the George Polk Award for national reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting, the Society of Environmental Journalists award for in-depth reporting, and many other honors. In addition to The Swamp, he is the author of The New New Deal, a New York Times bestseller. Michael lives in Miami, Florida, with his family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul

“Swamp” seems like a grossly inadequate term with which to describe the Florida Everglades. Anyone who has looked out upon the vast expanse of the sawgrass flatlands, while the birds sing from invisible places, knows that the Everglades are much, much more than a swamp. Yet the Everglades have often......more

Goodreads review by Krista

All I knew about the Everglades before I visited in May 2009 was that I had never been to them, despite all the time I had spent in Miami as a child, and they had alligators. All I knew when I left was that the Everglades were endangered because of water use conflicts and that they weren't near as w......more

Goodreads review by Jessica

Even though this book doesn't get into woo woo stuff, reading this only reinforced my conviction that there are spiritual implications to protecting and respecting swamps. If you work to protect them they will protect you. Swamps protected the Seminole from Andrew Jackson's armies and they protect o......more