the swamp the everglades florida and the politics of paradise

Among the twenty homes that are featured in this lavish volume are those of Dorothy Spreckels Munn and Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau.

Remember who you are, you are a Southern Star.Ī definitive collection, edited by one of the world’s pre-eminent authorities on populism. Both old and new money flocks to Palm Beach for “the season”, and the houses that line the oceanfront and Intercoastal Waterway exhibit a remarkable range of approaches to living under the subtropical sun. Sometimes as adults we need a little reminder, also. This essential account is a revelatory-and riveting-history of an era that still affects our country today.Ģ0 TIPS for Southern Shells and Other Belles While the global world has changed extensively over the last 200 years since the birth of America and the Southern U.S., the intimate advice from Southern mothers to their children has remained virtually unchanged. Knowlton breathes dynamic life into the forces that made and wrecked Florida during the decade: the real estate moguls Carl Fisher, George Merrick, and Addison Mizner, and the once-in-a-century hurricane whose aftermath triggered the stock market crash. For while giant fortunes were being made and lost and the nightlife raged more raucously than anywhere else, the pure beauty of the Everglades suffered wanton ruination and the workers, mostly black, who built and maintained the boom, endured grievous abuses.

In Bubble in the Sun Christopher Knowlton examines the grand artistic and entrepreneurial visions behind Coral Gables, Boca Raton, Miami Beach, and other storied sites, as well as the darker side of the frenzy. Yet, the import and deep impact of these historical events have never been explored thoroughly until now. Tycoons, crooks, and celebrities arrived en masse to promote or exploit this new and dazzling American frontier in the sunshine. Here was Vegas before there was a Vegas: gambling was condoned and so was drinking, since prohibition was not enforced. The boom spawned a new subdivision civilization-and the most egregious large-scale assault on the environment in the name of “progress.” Nowhere was the glitz and froth of the Roaring Twenties more excessive than in Florida. The decade there produced the largest human migration in American history, far exceeding the settlement of the West, as millions flocked to the grand hotels and the new cities that rose rapidly from the teeming wetlands. The 1920s in Florida was a time of incredible excess, immense wealth, and precipitous collapse.

**** Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression

The swamp the everglades florida and the politics of paradise