American History

The question of the destruction and the eventual revival of the Everglades is the basis of the book The Swamp by Grunewald.  In this account, Grunewald depicts the chronicle of the abuse of man to nature in the southern Florida alongside his exceptional efforts to remedy the situation. The Everglades was at one point in history, considered as the wasteland and thus, America thought of draining it and eventually reclaiming it. Considering its present status as a respected natural treasure, the American society is shown to have laid massive environmental projects to save it. The Swamp is a detailed account that takes us through a fascinating journey from the hay days to the present age by  illuminating the social, political and natural history of the Americas captivating and yet little known scraps of land.

After the inarguable independence in the United States, the everglades became the last frontier of the United States in a wild country. With regard to this, a series of visionaries made gallant efforts to drain and reclaim it but quite surprising, nature refused to cave in to all this attempts. It is evident that the intentions of the Americans in positions of power wanted to reclaim the Everglades. For example, after the hurricane drowned a massive number of people in the 1928, the Army corps of engineers tried to tame the destruction by building canals as well as levees. This was aimed towards changing half of the everglades into an expansive suburb and sugar plantation. Accordingly, the southern everglade which was preserved as a national park later deteriorated into an environmental mess.

The later effects of the everglades as pictured in this book saw America in need of the swamp and Grunewald exclusively shows how the newer breed of policy makers changed the whole politics of everglades therefore producing an  8 billion rescue plan. Arguably, the plan became a blueprint for the global ecological era of ecosystem restoration. Regardless of this plan, everglades still suffers the threats greed and the well positioned recklessness that continues to lead to its decline.

Significantly, the insights into the history of the United States are well contained in Grunewald book which is dubbed the story of the environment. In light of his central message, Grunewald demonstrates how greedy developers as well as army social engineers diverted the whole plan to recue the messed up everglades, drained it and exploited it for close to century. For instance, fewer white people lived in southern Florida at around 1838 and the everglades at that time were a vast and unutilized bog.

However, years later, several people streamed to south Florida and a century later close to seven million people lived in the swamp. As a result, newer people began contemplating the need to stay in the everglade and after World War II many residents began draining the everglade of it s water and extensively destroying the wild life of the swamp. This detailed account by Grunewald emphasis on the role of politics in damaging the everglades and thereafter reclaiming it.

It is plausible to argue that The Swamp is a radiant work of research that is extensively about the evolution of destroyed everglades into the Americas much cherished wetland. Grunewald explains that the original everglades were not botanical swamp but a large sheet of wetland that spread across saw grass. But presently, despites the many efforts to correct several damages afflicted by the engineers over the past 150 years or so, the Swamp remained endangered. For example, Grunewald writes that the ecological mess in the swamp has made obvious that some wading birds do not darken the above sky and the sprawl continue to chew the periphery of the cypress an indication that the damage is still ongoing.

Perhaps, the risk that had pervaded the leitmotif of south Florida since Europeans moved into its wild interior. With regard to this, the region became risky for some Indians who had scantly escaped the destruction of the US army in the 1830s. The story of the sprawl busy chewing the edge of the cypress tree connects the history of the everglades to the history of the US. Accordingly, the US soldiers continued go hang on the big cypress and by the 19th century, their reduced destruction of the Indians still continued.

There was a formidable risk that structured the political frameworks to believe that the draining of the everglades was to make the country better suited for cultivation and settlement. Nevertheless, the story of Grunewald dissects into the political war faced the southern Florida after the establishment of the national park at the ground of the 1947 hydro system. This has the implication that the upstream city dweller alongside their sugar growers counterparts had a share in the fresh water while the park had to settle the leftovers. Moreover, the army corps of engineers worked on the largest effort to move thereafter in a bid to design canals and levees that save human lives as well as improve on the sunshine economy of the state.

In addition, the environmental history that tracks the central borne of  contention in the development as well as settlement in the peninsula region for water denotes that the hostility experienced in the everglades against settlements form the basis of the United States attitudes towards Indianan and the others. Grunewald points out that the battle of slavery, racism and somehow immigration has never stopped and ideally, The Swamp is some sort of a fabric that casts the extreme labors that a yielded a violent history in the name of a southern tier of Florida. Significantly, The Swamp serves up to more than 500 years of bloody human antics that were executed by legions of engineers, generals, politicians and these who were able as they killed others as well as the swamp.

Constructed under the concept of nature Grunewald brings out the element of politicians a bid their greedy misguided and corrupt nature. With regard to this everglades were rare in the ecosystem and this symbolizes what the entire American society needs, is loosing, saving and losing again. This means that the unconquerable territory is able to support a multitude of people because it is in the nature of human s that they learn nothing from their pasts mistakes and entirely lean on the angles of policy making that our unrealistic forefathers failed to see.

The insanity dealt by in this book revolves around how Europeans killed people as evidenced in the attempt of Spanish to face out the aboriginal Indians and how at the end of the radical war, the British made effort to drive away the Spanish and give up the colony back to Spain .At the same point, the American borrowed this idea of killing everybody and them themselves embarked on the spree of thrashing the Seminoles who were at the same time refuges from the creek war killer (354-358). After the industrial age became fully in roar, the Swamp connotes the notion of the everglades in the southern Florida to drain the swamp articulates the culture of corruption that saw the resources of the country being drained by the politicians, engineers and people in the position of power at the time.

To recap, the essence of the everglades is to point out the events in the southern Florida and underscore the long journey Americans have come in a bid to loss, save and loss their valuable resources t due to poor policies. From the foregoing discussion, it is evident tat we are living in an age in which our quality of life resources as well as inventions are quickly being brain washed. This lies in the conceptualization that became the testimony ingenuity of man at one point has changed into the vessel of doom for the continuation of our society. This is evidenced in industries such as energy as well as nuclear technology and therefore, Grunewald documents the history of how the everglades were changes and the possibility that they form the dominate theme of why man has to rehabilitate nature before destroying it again.