Books about Everglades from Amazon.com

From "the funniest important writer in America" (Miami Herald) comes a tale that is gleefully zany and incisively sharp and now available in trade paperback for the first time..
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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..
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Drawn from fragments of historical fact, Matthiessen's masterpiece brilliantly depicts the fortunes and misfortunes of Edgar J. Watson, a real-life entrepreneur and outlaw who appeared in the lawless Florida Everglades around the turn of the century..
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Doc Ford returns to his stilt house on Dinkin's Bay to find an old friend and one-time lover waiting for him. Her real estate developer husband has disappeared and been pronounced dead. She's sure there's worse to follow--and she's right. Ford follows the trail deep into the Everglades, where a shady character and his get-rich-quick scheme are about to put both of their lives on the endangered list..
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Dusky MacMorgan is living the good life off sunny Fleming Key. But thereÂ’s a storm coming in the form of the beautiful April Yarborough SheÂ’s the daughter of an old pal, and sheÂ’s come to ask for MacMorganÂ’s help.

The Yarboroughs have been in Florida forever. Many of them live off the grid, deep in the Everglades. Now someoneÂ’s trying to drive them off their cherished swampland.

When MacMorgan dives into the fray, he finds that the deadliest danger in the swamp isn’t quicksand or gators, but big money— armed with some big guns..
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Charles "Chaz" Perrone fancies himself a take-charge kind of guy. So when this "biologist by default" suspects that his curvaceous wife, Joey, has stumbled onto a profitable pollution scam he's running on behalf of Florida agribusiness mogul Red Hammernut, he sets out right away to solve the problem--by heaving Joey off the deck of a luxury cruise liner and into the Atlantic Ocean, far from Key West. But--whoops!--Joey, a former swimming champ, doesn't drown. Instead, as Carl Hiaasen tells in his 10th adult novel, Skinny Dip, she makes her way back to shore, thanks both to a wayward bale of Jamaican marijuana and lonerish ex-cop Mick Stranahan (Skin Tight, 1989), and then launches a bogus blackmail campaign that's guaranteed to drive her lazy, libidinous hubby into a self-protective frenzy.

You've got to hand it to Hiaasen: He's perfected a formula for crisply written, satirical crime fiction that makes the best use of imaginatively repulsive villains, as well as less thoroughly venal scoundrels and victims who ultimately overcome their antagonists, all while stumping for the preservation of Florida's environment, particularly the Everglades. In Skinny Dip, we find Chaz (who'd rather be golfing than puttering around the "hot, buggy, funky-smelling and treacherous" reaches of nature) falsifying water samples to help Hammernut turn the 'Glades into "God's septic tank." That scheme, though, is endangered not just by Joey's sudden disappearance, but by the suspicions of a python-loving police detective and Chaz's own outstanding inability to tame his Viagra-enhanced tumescence. Even by assigning Chaz a baby-sitter--the hulking, hirsute, and painkiller-addicted Tool--Hammernut can't keep his pet biologist out of trouble. As Joey and Stranahan unfold their revenge plot, and Tool's conscience grows in competition with Chaz's ego, the reader can only marvel at the extent of the train wreck ahead.

As much fun as Hiaasen has delivering Chaz his climactic comeuppance, what's missing from Skinny Dip is a more complex, more credible development of Mick Stranahan's character and the relationship he builds with the much younger Joey Perrone. Like Erin Grant, from Strip Tease, Joey has far more going for her than her bra-cup size; but "hero" Stranahan is of far less interest here than any of his fellow players. --J. Kingston Pierce.
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Patrick Smith's fans have welcomed this volume containing two of his acclaimed novels.

Forever Island tells the story of Charlie Jumper, a Seminole Indian who clings to the ancient ways and teaches them to his grandson. When their simple existence is threatened by developers, Charlie fights back.

Allapattah is the story of a young Seminole in despair in the white man's world. Allapattah means crocodile, a creature that becomes Toby Tiger's obsession and that he must wrestle to set himself free..
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Updated and revised for the 60th Anniversary New afterword by Michael Grunwald, author of The Swamp..
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