East Naples' contemporary history is not special, or unique: its processes shaped a mostly grey suburb nestled in the immediate vicinity of the great southern city, sharing its limits and feeding its needs. A case study with worldwide resonance, the book offers East Naples as emblematic of the deep environmental changes wrought on peripheral areas by processes of energy transitions, economic development and urbanisation. It interrogates modernity's distinctive global processes of industrialisation and deindustrialisation as enacted on an ancient natural landscape - Naples' former threshold of coastal and marshy ecosystems, now buried in the sedimentary accumulation of concrete, fumes and toxic chemicals unleashed by industrial and urban development. Caruso interrogates the human choices, the material context and the different perceptions of nature, health or production that led to these changes; and his book turns an environmentally-focused perspective on two of modernity's distinctive global processes: industrialisation and deindustrialisation. The volume reconstructs the discursive and physical factors that created the East Naples 'swamp', from the late eighteenth century to the present, through its transition from actual swamp to metaphorical, an ambiguous space characterised by chaos and disorder, hostility and risks, but also resistance, dignity and hope. It is a story both local and global, of 'hygienist' thought, urbanisation, industrialisation and deindustrialisation, ecological risk and attempted regeneration.

East Naples' contemporary history is not special, or unique: its processes shaped a mostly grey suburb nestled in the immediate vicinity of the great southern city, sharing its limits and feeding its needs. A case study with worldwide resonance, the book offers East Naples as emblematic of the deep environmental changes wrought on peripheral areas by processes of energy transitions, economic development and urbanisation. It interrogates modernity's distinctive global processes of industrialisation and deindustrialisation as enacted on an ancient natural landscape - Naples' former threshold of coastal and marshy ecosystems, now buried in the sedimentary accumulation of concrete, fumes and toxic chemicals unleashed by industrial and urban development. Caruso interrogates the human choices, the material context and the different perceptions of nature, health or production that led to these changes; and his book turns an environmentally-focused perspective on two of modernity's distinctive global processes: industrialisation and deindustrialisation. The volume reconstructs the discursive and physical factors that created the East Naples 'swamp', from the late eighteenth century to the present, through its transition from actual swamp to metaphorical, an ambiguous space characterised by chaos and disorder, hostility and risks, but also resistance, dignity and hope. It is a story both local and global, of 'hygienist' thought, urbanisation, industrialisation and deindustrialisation, ecological risk and attempted regeneration.

A prize-winning r"Washington Post" reporter tells the story of the Florida Everglades, from its beginnings as 4,500 off-putting square miles of natural liquid wasteland to the ecological mess it has become. Photos.

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.

Gain an insider's vantage point on this exceptional part of the Florida coast.

Jim Nisbet is a cult favorite in Europe and it's easy to see why. He's "a lot more than just good . . . his style has overtones of Walker Percy's smooth southern satin, but his characters--losers, grifters, con men--hark back to the days of James M. Cain's twisted images of morality," writes the Toronto Globe-Mail. In the tradition of Jim Thompson and Damon Runyon, Jim Nisbet is too good to miss and Windward Passage is a masterpiece that raises the bar even for a master like Nisbet. In the parallel near-future, a ship named for a jellyfish sinks into the Caribbean with its captain chained to the mast. Left behind is a logbook missing ten pages, presidential DNA hidden in a brick of smuggled cocaine, and a nearly- completed novel. Tipsy, the dead sailor's sister, and Red Means, his erstwhile employer, travel from San Francisco to the Caribbean and back as they attempt to unravel a mystery that rapidly widens from death at sea to international conspiracy. With verve and humor to match the Illuminati Trilogy, Nisbet has fashioned an engaging facsimile of our modern world, albeit with snappier dialogue, amped-up technology, and even more clearly stated political prejudices. "Neither Norman Mailer nor Truman Capote has in their writing been able to produce such an intensity as Nisbet has achieved," writes Germany's Die Welt. Pick up Windward Passageand see why.

Gain an insider’s vantage point on this exceptional part of the Florida coast. Whether Charlotte Harbor’s wild shorelines and preserved estuaries, or Sarasota’s historic culture sweetened by sugar magnates, travelers have an in-depth look on the environment, history, and culture of this beautiful stretch of coastline. Now in its 6th fully updated edition, this guide gives visitors and locals access to the best of Florida’s Gulf Coast. Do it all, from the fabled “Sanibel stoop” for collecting seashells to dining in the finest five-star bistros. The author’s deep local knowledge again provides the most reliable info available to this paradise.