The Everglades, River of Grass, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Illustrated by Robert Fink

Before 1947, when Marjory Stoneman Douglas named the Everglades a “river of grass” in this treasured classic of nature writing, most people considered the area a vast and worthless swamp. She brought the world’s attention to the need to preserve the Everglades as the unique and magnificent place that it is.

“The Eleventh Hour,” the closing chapter of the first publication of the book, called for action to save the Everglades. In 1988, the Revised Edition was published with an additional chapter, “Forty More Years of Crisis,” by Randy Lee Loftis with Marjory Stoneman Douglas. That chapter outlines the environmental changes, scientific research, and political machinations that had propelled and restrained the fight to save the Everglades in the forty years between first publication and that edition.

This Anniversary Edition offers an update by Cyril Zaneski, environmental writer for the Miami Herald, on the events affecting the Glades in the last ten years. “Coming Together” sings a new song of the Everglades. Coming perhaps full circle to join the celebration of the life of the grassy water that is Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s book, Zaneski writes of the beginnings of the ecological restoration of South Florida, how disparate interests have come together to begin to undo the damage and save the Everglades. Though much work still must be done to ensure successful restoration, there is hope that these fifty years comprise a neat picture of an environment gone terribly wrong, a book that called attention to the near-catastrophe, and a resultant committed effort to fix it.

“A description of what is surely the strangest river in the world, an almost poem, in a unique and fascinating volume. Mrs. Douglas has put into this description an unearthliness, a strong rhythm, a compactness of natural imagery that is dazzling, and, above all, an organization and discipline that approaches poetic form.” — John Hersey, New York Herald Tribune

“Her book helped put the Everglades, and the environmental problems of South Florida, on the map of national consciousness. It is filled with beautiful prose, solid reporting, and a prickly defense of place.” — Jeff Klinkenberg, St. Petersburg Times

Marjory Stoneman Douglas is 107 years old and has lived in Florida since 1915. One of Florida’s environment’s foremost spokespersons, she has been a journalist, writer of fiction and nonfiction, editor, publisher, and crusader for women’s rights, racial justice, and conservation of nature. Her books include Florida: The Long Frontier, Alligator Crossing, Hurricane, Freedom River, and her critically acclaimed autobiography, Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Voice of the River with John Rothchild, also available from Pineapple Press.

Hardcover $18.95 ISBN 1-56164-135-9 Size: 5 1/2 x 8 1/2   480 Pages 20 line drawings