Download or read book Swamp written by Anthony Wilson and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, swamps have been idealized and demonized, purged and protected. Today, they are simultaneously considered metaphorical places of evil, pestilence, and death, and treasured as diverse biological ecosystems teeming with life. Covering not only swamps and bogs but also marshes and wetlands, Swamp ventures into the cultural and ecological histories of these mysterious, mythologized, and misunderstood landscapes. Anthony Wilson takes readers into swamps across the globe, from the freshwater marshes of Botswana’s tremendous Okavango delta, to the notable swamps between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to the peat bogs in Russia, the British Isles, and Scandinavia, which have been used as energy sources for centuries. It explores ideas and representations of wetlands across centuries, cultures, and continents, considering legend and folklore, mythology, literature, film, and natural and cultural history. As it plumbs the murky depths of swamps from the distant past to an uncertain future, Swamps provides an engaging, accessible, informative, and lavishly illustrated journey into these fascinating landscapes.

Download or read book Swamplands written by Edward Struzik and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world filled with breathtaking beauty, we have often overlooked the elusive magic of certain landscapes. A cloudy river flows into an Arctic wetland where sandhill cranes and muskoxen dwell. Further south, cypress branches hang low over dismal swamps. Places like these-collectively known as swamplands or peatlands-often go unnoticed for their ecological splendor. They are as globally significant as rainforests, yet, because of their reputation as wastelands, they are being systematically drained and degraded. Swamplands celebrates these wild places, as journalist Edward Struzik highlights the unappreciated struggle to save peatlands by scientists, conservationists, and landowners around the world. An ode to peaty landscapes in all their offbeat glory, the book is also a demand for awareness of the myriad threats they face. It inspires us to see the beauty and importance in these least likely of places­. Our planet's survival might depend on it.

Download or read book Fen Bog and Swamp written by Annie Proulx and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Literary Hub!* *A 2022 NBCC Awards Nonfiction Finalist and a 2023 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award Finalist* From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, this riveting deep dive into the history of our wetlands and what their systematic destruction means for the planet “is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action” (Esquire). “I learned something new—and found something amazing—on every page.” —Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. In a vivid and revelatory journey through history, Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. She introduces the early explorers who launched the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and writes of the diseases spawned in the wetlands—the Ague, malaria, Marsh Fever. A sobering look at the degradation of wetlands over centuries and the serious ecological consequences, this is “an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important” (Bill McKibben). “A stark but beautifully written Silent Spring–style warning from one of our greatest novelists.” —The Christian Science Monitor

Download or read book The Swamp Peddlers written by Jason Vuic and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Florida has long been a beacon for retirees, but for many, the American dream of owning a home there was a fantasy. That changed in the 1950s, when the so-called "installment land sales industry" hawked billions of dollars of Florida residential property, sight unseen, to retiring northerners. For only $10 down and $10 a month, working-class pensioners could buy a piece of the Florida dream: a graded home site that would be waiting for them in a planned community when they were ready to build. The result was Cape Coral, Port St. Lucie, Deltona, Port Charlotte, Palm Coast, and Spring Hill, among many others—sprawling communities with no downtowns, little industry, and millions of residential lots. In The Swamp Peddlers, Jason Vuic tells the raucous tale of the sale of residential lots in postwar Florida. Initially selling cheap homes to retirees with disposable income, by the mid-1950s developers realized that they could make more money selling parcels of land on installment to their customers. These "swamp peddlers" completely transformed the landscape and demographics of Florida, devastating the state environmentally by felling forests, draining wetlands, digging canals, and chopping up at least one million acres into grid-like subdivisions crisscrossed by thousands of miles of roads. Generations of northerners moved to Florida cheaply, but at a huge price: high-pressure sales tactics begat fraud; poor urban planning begat sprawl; poorly-regulated development begat environmental destruction, culminating in the perfect storm of the 21st-century subprime mortgage crisis.

Download or read book Stirring the Mud written by Barbara Hurd and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these nine evocative essays, Barbara Hurd explores the seductive allure of bogs, swamps, and wetlands. Hurd's forays into the land of carnivorous plants, swamp gas, and bog men provide fertile ground for rich thoughts about mythology, literature, Eastern spirituality, and human longing. In her observations of these muddy environments, she finds ample metaphor for human creativity, 9imagination, and fear.

Download or read book Bows Swamps Whitetails written by Tim Lewis and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2006-09-25 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pages of this book have captured, distilled, and illuminated the wonders of the wild lands and the whitetails that haunt them, the other creatures that render the swamps magical and intriguing, and the quiet thump of a bow and hiss of an arrow. Midnight black raccoons, ghost-like piebalds, silent bobcats, antlered monarchs, charging hogs, moonlight adventures all add to the spice and excitement. Any aficionado of nature or whitetail deer, any sportsman or hunter, any lover of archery will find Bows, Swamps, Whitetails both fascinating and delightful. It is entertaining and yet full of information that will enable the reader to be a better hunter or woodsman.

Download or read book Swamp Stories written by Jim Arnosky and published by StarWalk Kids Media. This book was released on 2014-08-30 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this followup to his narrative nonfiction book WATER STORIES, Jim Arnosky chronicles his adventures on the water. A StarWalk Kids Original Book.

Download or read book Bedtime at the Swamp written by Kristyn Crow and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-07-22 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Splish splash rumba-rumba bim bam boom! It's bedtime at the swamp—except somebody's not ready. Somebody's still splashing in the water and the mud. Is there a monster on the loose? Kristyn Crow has taken every child's worst nightmare and transformed it into a frolic through swampland. With funny illustrations and a catchy refrain, this story won't scare little monster too much before bedtime.

Download or read book Sinister Swamps written by Lyle Blackburn and published by Legendscape Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to iconic landscapes, nothing can rival the ominous allure of a swamp. Within these haunting domains of moss-draped trees and brackish waters lurks some of nature's finest work, along with some of the most compelling mysteries and spooky legends the world has ever known. From reports of unknown beasts, ghostly figures, and spook lights to tales of missing persons, lost planes, and witches, swamps inevitably ooze with intrigue as they offer a glimpse into a primordial past that may well reflect our very origin.For the last decade, noted author and adventurer Lyle Blackburn has delved into the world of swamps, collecting reports of strange phenomena and boating through their bubbling backwaters to seek the truth behind the fascinating tales. Do monsters, ghosts, and other bizarre entities truly exist in these unique and primitive regions? Find out by joining Blackburn for an eerie exploration as he parts the mossy curtains to expose the sinister secrets within some of North America's most notorious swamplands.

Download or read book Lawyers Swamps and Money written by Royal C Gardner and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-06-22 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lawyers, Swamps, and Money is an accessible, engaging guide to the complex set of laws governing America's wetlands. After explaining the importance of these critical natural areas, the book examines the evolution of federal law, principally the Clean Water Act, designed to protect them. Readers will first learn the basics of administrative law: how agencies receive and exercise their authority, how they actually make laws, and how stakeholders can influence their behavior through the Executive Branch, Congress, the courts, and the media. These core concepts provide a base of knowledge for successive discussions of: the geographic scope and activities covered by the Clean Water Act the curious relationship between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency the goal of no net loss of wetlands the role of entrepreneurial wetland mitigation banking the tension between wetland mitigation bankers and in-lieu fee mitigation programs wetland regulation and private property rights. The book concludes with insightful policy recommendations to make wetlands law less ambiguous and more effective. A prominent legal scholar and wetlands expert, professor Royal C. Gardner has a rare knack for describing landmark cases and key statutes with uncommon clarity and even humor. Students of environmental law and policy and natural resource professionals will gain the thorough understanding of administrative law needed to navigate wetlands policy-and they may even enjoy it.

Download or read book Swamp Water written by Vereen Bell and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swamp Water, the first novel by a young native of south Georgia, was an immediate critical and financial success. The setting is the mysterious Okefenokee in southern Georgia--"the Swamp that pulled a man down and never let him go." Movie versions were made in 1941 (by Jean Renoir) and in 1951.

Download or read book From Swamp to Wetland written by Chris Wilhelm and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2022-08-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book chronicles the creation of Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. This effort, which spanned 1928 to 1958, was of central importance to the later emergence of modern environmentalism. Prior to the park’s creation, the Everglades was seen as a reviled and useless swamp, unfit for typical recreational or development projects. The region’s unusual makeup also made it an unlikely candidate to become a national park, as it had none of the sweeping scenic vistas or geological monuments found in other nationally protected areas. Park advocates drew on new ideas concerning the value of biota and ecology, the importance of wilderness, and the need to protect habitats, marine ecosystems, and plant life to redefine the Everglades. Using these ideas, the Everglades began to be recognized as an ecologically valuable and fragile wetland—and thus a region in need of protective status. While these new ideas foreshadowed the later emergence of modern environmentalism, tourism and the economic desires of Florida’s business and political elites also impacted the park’s future. These groups saw the Everglades’ unique biology and ecology as a foundation on which to build a tourism empire. They connected the Everglades to Florida’s modernization and commercialization, hoping the park would help facilitate the state’s transformation into the Sunshine State. Political conservatives welcomed federal power into Florida so long as it brought economic growth. Yet, even after the park’s creation, conservative landowners successfully fought to limit the park and saw it as a threat to their own economic freedoms. Today, a series of levees on the park’s eastern border marks the line between urban and protected areas, but development into these areas threatens the park system. Rising sea levels caused by global warming are another threat to the future of the park. The battle to save the swamp’s biodiversity continues, and Everglades Park stands at the center of ongoing restoration efforts.

Download or read book Swamp Souths written by Kirstin L. Squint and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2020-03-04 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies expands the geographical scope of scholarship about southern swamps. Although the physical environments that form its central subjects are scattered throughout the southeastern United States—the Atchafalaya, the Okefenokee, the Mississippi River delta, the Everglades, and the Great Dismal Swamp—this evocative collection challenges fixed notions of place and foregrounds the ways in which ecosystems shape cultures and creations on both local and global scales. Across seventeen scholarly essays, along with a critical introduction and afterword, Swamp Souths introduces new frameworks for thinking about swamps in the South and beyond, with an emphasis on subjects including Indigenous studies, ecocriticism, intersectional feminism, and the tropical sublime. The volume analyzes canonical writers such as William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Eudora Welty, but it also investigates contemporary literary works by Randall Kenan and Karen Russell, the films Beasts of the Southern Wild and My Louisiana Love, and music ranging from swamp rock and zydeco to Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade. Navigating a complex assemblage of places and ecosystems, the contributors argue with passion and critical rigor for considering anew the literary and cultural work that swamps do. This dynamic collection of scholarship proves that swampy approaches to southern spaces possess increased relevance in an era of climate change and political crisis.

Download or read book Freewater written by Amina Luqman-Dawson and published by Jimmy Patterson. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the John Newbery Medal Winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award Award-winning author Amina Luqman-Dawson pens a lyrical, accessible historical middle-grade novel about two enslaved children’s escape from a plantation and the many ways they find freedom. After an entire young life of enslavement, twelve-year-old Homer escapes Southerland Plantation with his little sister Ada, leaving his beloved mother behind. Much as he adores her and fears for her life, Homer knows there’s no turning back, not with the overseer on their trail. Through tangled vines, secret doorways, and over a sky bridge, the two find a secret community called Freewater, deep in the recesses of the swamp. In this new, free society made up of escaped slaves and some born-free children, Homer cautiously embraces a set of spirited friends, almost forgetting where he came from. But when he learns of a threat that could destroy Freewater, he hatches a plan to return to Southerland plantation, overcome his own cautious nature, and free his mother from enslavement. Loosely based on a little-mined but important piece of history, this is an inspiring and deeply empowering story of survival, love, and courage.

Download or read book Tator s Swamp Fever written by Diane Shapley-Box and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tator the Gator discovers the value of reading books while helping cure his sick mother in the swamplands.

Download or read book Swamplife written by Laura Ogden and published by . This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alligator hunters, mangroves, and the (mis)adventures of the Ashley Gang in the Florida Everglades.

Download or read book The Swamps of Jersey written by Michael Stephen Daigle and published by . This book was released on 2024-09-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A weeklong storm leads to the discovery of a dead woman in the Old Iron Bog. Is she Det. Frank Nagler's girlfriend? Book One of the award-winning Frank Nagler Mystery series.