Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890–1998)

I visited the Everglades about a year and a half ago, and picked this book up in a visitor's center there after repeatedly hearing it, and its author, mentioned as being extremely influential in the history of the Everglades and in Everglades conservation efforts. I have to say, it's not at all what I was expecting. It does start out with a chapter on the natural world of the Everglades and ends with one that makes some very strong statements about how much damage humans have done to the show more place. But mostly it's really a history of the Everglades, or even of south Florida as a whole, from prehistory up through 1947, when the book was first published. I have to admit, I wasn't always in love with Douglas' writing style, which is a bit purplish towards the beginning and a bit disjointed towards the end. But most of the history itself is quite interesting, and was either unfamiliar to me or involved things I only knew about in broad and general terms. And she really does try very hard to bring it vividly to life, sometimes with pretty good success.

I'm also pleased to report that, while she does of course use language that's very dated now and certain kinds of descriptions that modern authors would hopefully avoid, her treatment of the native peoples of Florida is way more respectful than I'd have expected for 1947. She very much treats all the people in her narratives as people, whatever their race or culture, and accepts those cultures on their own terms. (Mind, you I can't speak to how accurate her depictions of native cultures are, but she does seem to have at least wanted get it right.) And while she might not exactly be condemning the evils of colonialism on every page, she doesn't remotely whitewash them, either, and is always ready to call an injustice and injustice and a horror a horror. So, y'know, a considerably less racist and sanitized/mythologized account of American history than I got growing up decades later, anyway.

The edition that I have also includes an extensive afterword by journalist Michael Grunwald describing what's happened to the Everglades' environment and the various efforts to both develop and conserve it since the original book was written... which is a lot, good, bad, and ugly. He also talks about Douglas's own involvement in that history, which continued well into a ripe old age.

Anyway, even if this wasn't remotely what I was expecting, I can certainly see why it was influential, and whether or not I always loved her writing, I have come away with considerable respect for Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Less so for humanity and how we treat each other and the natural world, but let's be honest, that was kind of a given.

Rating: I'm giving this a 3.5/5 as a reading experience, but as a piece of history in itself, arguably it should rate higher. show less

Its endlessness an ache against the eyes
The sawgrass marches on to meet the skies
The gaunt and twisted mangrove-root parades
The vastness men have called the Everglades,

from Everglades by Vivian Yeiser Laramore Rader (1931)
(I found this poem in Florida in Poetry, edited by Jane A. Jones & Maurice O’Sullivan)

5. The Everglades : River of Grass (Special 50th Anniversary Edition) by Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1947, 458 pages, read Jan 21 – Feb 19)
(Illustrated by Robert Fink. Revised 1978. 40 show more year update by Randy Lee Loftis with MS Douglas, 1988. 50 year update by Cyril Zaneski, 1997)

I simply lack the correct words to describe this. At the most basic this is a both a description and a history of the Everglades. The history begins with the geology of their formation, and carries on through the known native inhabitants, the Spanish explorers, “three hundred quiet years”, the Seminole Wars, the disastrous attempts to drain the Everglades, the first massive influxes of people in the early 20th-century, to, finally, the brink of the disastrous work by the Corps of Engineers in 1947. MSD wrote this before the Corps began their work. An updated history of the Corps doings and its consequences, the slow efforts to undo what they did, and all the other problems condemning the Everglades is covered in a two lengthy afterwards for the 40-year and 50-year anniversaries of the book.

There is much to be said for the human history of the Everglades. Each stage feels like forgotten history, and yet through MSD each is fascinating. The Spanish adventures and failures are as interesting as those “three hundred quiet years” when the English colonies flourished, rebelled, expanded and few white men entered any deeper into the South Florida than the sparsely populated coast. The pyrrhic success of the Seminoles in the Seminoles wars are as beautiful as the dynamite blowing holes in Miami’s coastal ridge was tragic.

MSD’s writing has an elegance and texture that I want to say feels like the late 1940s-early 1950’s, except that I really have no clue whether that is true. She is a bit flowery for non-fiction, but in a way that works beautifully if you have some time and patience. She has a way of keeping her words impartial, but at the same time her tone has a desperate urgency to it. This was a call to save the Everglades by celebrating what they are and were.

This is all informal, with few footnotes (there is a somewhat extensive, but not updated bibliography). It is probably the starting point on the Everglades.

2011
http://www.librarything.com/topic/104839#2595562 show less

I was somewhat disappointed, but I should say right now that this was very-well written and parts – especially in the first chapter – were quite poetic. But I had been hoping for a book about the ecology of the Everglades and the movement to preserve it, and instead of natural history this focused almost exclusively on human history, although several chapters near the end did discuss some of the conservation issues. The book included some vividly gory accounts of people dying in bloody show more massacres (and they weren’t even quotes from primary sources), and I found them sickening enough that I almost put this on my did-not-finish shelf. A few parts seemed to drag for me as well. However, in fairness I cannot say this was a bad book, only that it was not for me.

That said, I did come across several passages I especially enjoyed, and I would have been thrilled if the entire book had gone on in this vein:

“The great piles of vapor from the Gulf Stream, amazing cumulus clouds that soar higher than tropic mountains from their even bases four thousand feet above the horizon, stand in ranked and glistening splendor in those summer nights; twenty thousand feet or more they tower tremendous, cool-pearl, frosty heights, blue-shadowed in the blue-blazing days.” (Page 17).

“The water is timeless, forever new and eternal. Only the rock, which time shaped and will outlast, records unimaginable ages.” (Page 33). show less

An interesting book, but it wasn't what I thought based on the recommendation. A bit of history, a bit of science, a sprinkling of hope--mostly dashed. It goes to show how far mankind has come...and unfortunately how much, much further we need to go on issues like living with the natural Everglades.