Download The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise AudioBook Free
The Everglades was America's last frontier, a outdoors country long after the West was received. In this booklet Michael Grunwald chronicles what sort of series of visionaries tried out to drain and "reclaim" it and exactly how OUR MOTHER EARTH refused to bend with their will; in the most harrowing tale, a 1928 hurricane drowned 2,500 people in the Everglades. However the Army Corps of Technicians finally tamed the beast with levees and canals, changing half the Everglades into sprawling suburbs and sweets plantations. And though the Southern Everglades was maintained as a national park, it soon deteriorated into an ecological mess. The River of Lawn stopped moving, and 90 percent of its wading wild birds vanished. Now America needs its swamp back again. Grunwald shows what sort of new variety of visionaries transformed Everglades politics, producing the $8 billion save plan. That plan is already the blueprint for a fresh worldwide period of ecosystem restoration. And The Swamp is a cautionary tale for that period. Through gripping narrative and dogged reporting, Grunwald shows how the Everglades continues to be threatened by the same hubris, greed, and well-intentioned folly that led to its decline.
