Paradise Lost? The Environmental History of Florida.

Paradise Lost? The Environmental History of Florida. Edited by Jack E. Davis and Raymond Arsenault. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2005. Pp. xiv, 420. $59.95, ISBN 0-8130-2826-4.)

Since the advent of environmental activism in the 1960s, environmental history has been most closely associated regionally with the history of the American West. Contests over land and water, the prevalence of aridity, and the rise of large cities like Chicago, dependent on pre-existing and overlapping ecosystems, set the tenor for the promising historical field. With Paradise Lost? The Environmental History of Florida, a group of talented scholars led by editors Jack E. Davis and Raymond Arsenault make a substantial move toward defining the unique environmental issues and their leading advocates and historical context, not only for Florida's environmental past but for the field of southern environmental history as well.

Paradise Lost? is a thoughtful collection of sixteen thematic essays ranging chronologically from the period of Spanish dominion to the modern era. One of the book's primary focal points, as noted in the introduction, is to emphasize "that the indigenous flora and fauna, combined with the subtropical climate of the lower peninsula, projected qualities of a paradise, an Eden, or a dreamland" (p. 5). Collectively, the authors have also attempted to illustrate the role of human beings in despoiling those conditions or creating a "second nature" out of what they originally found there (p. 6). Organizationally, the book is broken into four sections, "Paradise Explored and Interpreted," "Science, Technology, and Public Policy," "Despoliation," and "Conservation and Environmentalism." In addition to the categories, the book also does an admirable job of highlighting individuals, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Archie Cart, who brought environmental issues to the forefront of state politics and cultural dialogue. In an edited volume with ample evidence of environmental decay as a result of development, the voices of individuals such as Carr and Douglas illustrate the resilience of the human spirit to champion Florida's wetlands and fauna.

The essays in Paradise Lost? situate Florida's environmental problems as central topics not only in state and regional history but also in the broader environmental history of the nation. In light of recent hurricanes in the Gulf region, Raymond Arsenault's "The Public Storm: Hurricanes and the State in Twentieth-Century America" evaluates the intersection between politics and the destructive force of natural disasters. Arsenault persuasively illustrates how public expectations for protection by the state and governmental responses throughout the twentieth century have changed. Other pieces comparatively allude to environmental issues in other regions. Gary Garrett's essay, "Blasting through Paradise: The Construction and Consequences of the Tamiami Trail," for example, not only examines the highly conflicted efforts to build a cross-state highway between Miami and Ft. Myers but also compares the episode to the conquest of the frontier in the American West. Garrett notes, "The comparison of this region with the Great West is an apt one, for the same mission of conquest and progress that [Frederick Jackson] Turner found in the settlers of Kansas and South Dakota can be seen in the pioneers testing the borders of the Everglades" (p. 262).

Finally, other articles illustrate the global dimensions of the state's environmental past. Christian Warren's "'Nature's Navels': An Overview of the Many Environmental Histories of Florida Citrus," for example, examines the migration of the orange tree from the Old World to Florida during the age of Spanish Conquest, as well as its evolution from a so-called wild tree to the most famous element of Florida's "second nature." This essay, which also discusses the advent of juice concentration, provides a statewide context for one of Florida's most global products. Finally, Warren illustrates the ways in which citrus growers and tourism operators have often benefited from each other's success in promoting the state for their divergent purposes.

The authors of the essays also highlight the links between development and environmental despoliation. One of the more creative examples of this is found in Jack E. Davis's "Alligators and Plume Birds: The Despoliation of Florida's Living Aesthetic." Davis illustrates how tourism and the prevailing consumer culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries devastated bird and alligator populations throughout the state's wetlands. David McCally's "The Everglades and the Florida Dream" juxtaposes the suburban oasis that Florida has offered to potential residents for generations with the fate of the Florida Everglades as a result of those collective ambitions. Finally, in "The Trials and Tribulations of Amos Quito: The Creation of the Florida Anit-Mosquito Association," Gordon Patterson illustrates how private associations pressured public figures and institutions into protecting their investment in Florida's developmental juggernaut.

Though minor in nature when compared to the book's strengths, the most evident weakness of the volume deals with the limited degree to which Florida's sprawling post World War II megalopolises (Miami, Orlando, Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg) and mass tourism (the cruise ship industry and beach development, for example) figure centrally into the essays. While urban development and growth are prevalent themes throughout the book, and indeed crucial components of the story of natural deterioration throughout the state, the reader is rarely taken into the cities to examine the critical links between urban growth and the decline of Florida's rural landscapes, wetlands, and rivers in the post World War II era. In fairness to the authors and editors, however, their concern seems to lie in the rural, undeveloped areas most affected by growth throughout the state.

Ultimately, this is a highly engaging, well-written, and well-edited collection of essays. The large number and variety of essays establishes common themes and points of departure for environmental historians of Florida and will no doubt serve as a point of origin for future researchers in the field. With the growth of the Sun Belt states since World War II, Florida's environmental past should garner more attention from historians. This volume is highly recommended for environmental historians and students of environmental history as well as members of the general public interested in one of the more overlooked yet vital aspects of Florida's history.

EVAN R. WARD

University of North Alabama