Reviews
"I congratulate Davis for his exceptional book on the life of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. More than just a biography, the book provides an excellent history of the modern environmental movement. I am certain that all who read it will be not only inspired by the dynamic, pivotal, and courageous life and work of Marjory Stoneman Douglas but also reminded of how terribly essential her efforts to protect the Florida Everglades and the environment remain."
—Senator Bob Graham
"Davis has vividly captured the Marjory Stoneman Douglas I knew—a feisty, funny, indomitable American original. With erudition and eloquence he carries the reader along in a gripping story of the century-long struggle to save the Everglades. And he tells us that Marjory would surely want us to know that the struggle is far from over. This book inspires us to carry on her work."
"A brilliant biography, An Everglades Providence completes the portrait of one of the most important environmental figures of the twentieth century. Environmentalists claim Marjory Stoneman Douglas as theirs, but she was not a full-time activist until age 79. Davis fills in the picture with writing as clever and fluid as his subject's and with meticulous research that will have readers asking, 'How'd he find that?' His book is also another life story: that of South Florida's environment and its devastating alteration. A must-read for citizens and decisionmakers, who can choose to keep altering nature or heed Douglas and live in its balance."
—Cynthia Barnett, author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.
"An impressive look at America during Douglas's lifetime and the growth of America's environmental movement. This outstanding volume is essential for environmental and history collections."
—Library Journal
"Paints an affectionate portrait of the quirky Douglas."
—Orion Magazine
"An Everglades Providence hardly knocks Douglas off the pedestal she properly occupies in Florida history. But this ambitious, scrupulously thorough biography extends credit to the many other people who helped put her there. Without diminishing Douglas' accomplishments, Davis details her critical collaborations with mentors, scientists, activists, journalists and friends who influenced her."
—Miami Herald
"Davis never met Douglas, but he has given her the serious biography she deserves, capturing her cantankerous personality and brilliant mind, while at the same time providing the historical context necessary to fully appreciate her amazing life. It's a tour de force."
—St. Petersburg Times
"Jack Davis’s significant biography of an amazing and influential woman, who worked for conservation in a paradoxically utilitarian state which houses the 'Everglades Providence,' is highly recommended reading for every environmental, Florida, literary and gender historian."
—Environmental History
Description
In the first comprehensive biography of Douglas, Jack E. Davis explores the 108-year life of this compelling woman. Douglas was more than an environmental activist. She was a suffragist, a lifetime feminist and supporter of the ERA, a champion of social justice, and an author of diverse literary talent. She came of age literally and professionally during the American environmental century, the century in which Americans mobilized an unprecedented popular movement to counter the equally unprecedented liberties they had taken in exploiting, polluting, and destroying the natural world.
The Everglades were a living barometer of America's often tentative shift toward greater environmental responsibility. Reconstructing this larger picture, Davis recounts the shifts in Douglas's own life and her instrumental role in four important developments that contributed to Everglades protection: the making of a positive wetland image, the creation of a national park, the expanding influence of ecological science, and the rise of the modern environmental movement. In the grand but beleaguered Everglades, which Douglas came to understand is a vast natural system that supports human life, she saw nature's providence.
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Cloth |
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Paper List price: $26.95 978-0-8203-3779-1 4/15/2011 |
Jack E. Davis is a professor of history at the University of Florida. He is editor of The Wide Brim: Early Poems and Ponderings of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and coeditor of Paradise Lost? The Environmental History of Florida.
