One of Library Journal's Best Books of 2006
Florida Book Award, Florida Nonfiction, Bronze Medalist
Al Burt Award for Florida Journalism
Losing It All to Sprawl is the poignant chronicle of award-winning nature writer Bill Belleville and how he came to understand and love his historic farmhouse and neighborhood, even as it was all wiped out from under him.
As tractors and backhoes encircle Belleville and his community, displacing everything Belleville has called home for the past fifteen years, he tells a story that is much older--10,000 years older. The saga stretches back to the Timucua and the Mayaca living in harmony with Florida's environment; conquistadors in the "land of flowers"; turn-of-the-century tourists "modernizing" the state; the original Cracker families who lived in Belleville's farmhouse. The millennia-long transformation is starkly contrasted by the unbridled growth and development consuming Belleville's home and, ultimately, his very sense of place.
In Losing It All to Sprawl, Belleville accounts for the impacts--social, political, natural, personal--that a community in the crosshairs of unsustainable growth must ultimately bear, but he also offers Floridians, and anyone facing the blight of urban confusion, the hope that can be found in the rediscovery and appreciation of our natural landscapes.
Reviews / Votes
"Weaves tales of vivid scenery and feral neighbors with the environmental devastation that overcame his rural neighborhood as the realtors and bulldozers rolled in." - E: The Environmental Magazine "The title says it all. If you live here, you know what he's talking about." - Tampa Tribune "Belleville shows the impact of relentless growth on one corner of Florida, a few houses on a dead end road,... a low-key community that had made its peace with nature, and how a mall and a few residential developers killed it." - South Florida Sun-Sentinel "Belleville chronicles the building of a regional mall just outside Sanford; and how the mall and spin-off development of gas stations, condos, and subdivisions swallows up his rural dirt-road neighborhood of Florida cracker homes built in the 1920s.... There's plenty to learn and ponder as you follow Belleville's literary hike over the sandy uplands and lush swamp bottoms of Central Florida." - Florida Times-Union "Reads like poetry and feels like a prayer." - Orlando Weekly"
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Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
ISBN-13
978-0-8130-3502-4 (9780813035024)
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Schweitzer Classification
Bill Belleville is a veteran author and documentary filmmaker specializing in environmental issues. His books include the critically acclaimed River of Lakes: A Journey on Florida's St. Johns River. Belleville won an Emmy for the production and scripting of Wekiva: Legacy or Loss? and was named Environmental Writer of the Year by Florida Audubon Society and Florida Wildlife Federation.