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An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century. By Jack E. Davis. Environmental History and the American South. (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2009. Pp. [xxvi], 758. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-3071-6.)
With An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, Jack E. Davis provides a dual biography of conservation activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998) and the Florida Everglades. The book is divided into three sections, with the chapters in the first half of the book neatly alternating between Douglas's background and the development of the Everglades. After reaching the publication of Douglas's pivotal study The Everglades: River of Grass (New York, 1947), Davis appropriately intertwines the narratives. In addition to focusing on Douglas's role in the conservation movement in Florida, Davis also deftly incorporates Douglas into the struggle for women's equality, another of her favorite causes.
The scope of the book yields fruitful opportunities to examine some of the momentous changes in environmental attitudes across the twentieth century. Until midcentury, Florida politicians and businessmen actively called for a complete renovation of the Everglades area, ambitiously beginning projects for dredging, canals, drainage, and removal of various forms of...