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Book Review
| Paradise Lost: The Environmental History of Florida. Edited by Jack E. Davis and Raymond Arsenault. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. xii + 420 pp. Illustrations, photographs, graphs, map, notes, index. $24.95
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| This collection of essays exploring Florida's environmental history is a much-needed edition for every environmental historian's shelves. As an environmentally singular state, Florida has undergone tremendous exploitation, most of which has taken place in the twentieth century. The sixteen essays of Paradise Lost? explore the range of this process through articles arranged in four sections: "Paradise Explored and Lost"; "Science, Technology, and Public Policy"; "Despoliation"; and "Conservation Environmentalism." |
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In the introduction editor Jack Davis explains the significance of Florida as paradise. As a place in which nature fantastically endows the physical setting, its significance rested first in its largesse that enabled the indigenous people to live without agriculture while retaining a sedentary existence; later fabled by the Spanish as a source of eternal youth, four hundred years later it attracted its first tourists and has attracted them ever since (p. 1). Its unique history, canon of writing, and fragile yet resilient environment make it worthy of environmental history study. |
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Florida is explored and interpreted in part 1, "Between Topos and Terrain," which surveys writing about Florida from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries and investigates such far-ranging subjects as William Bartram, Archie Carr, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and general environmental writing about the state. The second part delves into the exploitation of Florida's environment using science, technology, and public policy to boost the draining of the everglades, the control of mosquitoes, the citrus industry, and the history of hurricanes. Part 3, "Despoliation" investigates the demise of plume birds, the effect of the Tamiami Trail on the Everglades, and agriculture on Lake Apopka. |
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Part 4 offers four essays on "Conservation and Environmentalism" in which the work of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas is presented beside the dredging of Boca Ciega Bay, the destruction and preservation of Big Cypress Swamp, and the career of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal. |
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The volume introduces most but not all of Florida's environmental issues. The state currently begs for analysis of the effects of the Mosaic Phosphate mines and the conditions of Florida's drinking water in the face of rampant mining, and unchecked population growth with its attendant sprawl. Although the essays tangentially address the issues of endangered species, the effects of invasive species on Florida's ecology remains as yet unexplored. Environmental historians also look forward to a volume, or at the least a chapter, exploring the sanctuaries in Florida, their history, and their future; most of its defenders of wildlife continue their work without notice, yet "Paradise Lost" leads the way in the canon of Florida environmental history. |
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Cynthia Melendy teaches environmental history at the University of South Florida and is currently editing a manuscript on Cordelia Stanwood. |
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