The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise

The Everglades is a gripping narrative that chronicles the transformation of America's last frontier into a tamed beast, and how Mother Nature refused to bend to their will.

The book reveals the harrowing tale of a 1928 hurricane that drowned 2,500 people in the Everglades, and how the Army Corps of Engineers finally tamed the beast with levees and canals, converting half into sprawling suburbs and sugar plantations.

Despite the preservation of the Southern Everglades as a national park, it soon deteriorated into an ecological mess.

The River of Grass stopped flowing, and 90% of its wading birds vanished.

However, a new breed of visionaries transformed Everglades politics, producing an $8 billion rescue plan that is already the blueprint for a new worldwide era of ecosystem restoration.

This book serves as a cautionary tale for our era and provides a gripping narrative and dogged reporting on how the Everglades is still threatened by the same hubris, greed, and well-intentioned folly that led to its decline.