Over the last century, the Everglades underwent a metaphorical and ecological transition from impenetrable swamp to endangered wetland.   At the heart of this transformation lies the Florida sugar industry, which by the 1990s was at the center of the political storm over the multi-billion dollar ecological “restoration” of the Everglades.  Raising Cane in the ’Glades is the first study to situate the environmental transformation of the Everglades within the economic and historical geography of global sugar production and trade. Using, among other sources, interviews, government and corporate documents, and recently declassified U.S. State Department memoranda, Gail M. Hollander demonstrates that the development of Florida’s sugar region was the outcome of pitched battles reaching the highest political offices in the U.S. and in countries around the world, especially Cuba—which emerges in her narrative as a model, a competitor, and the regional “other” to Florida’s “self.”  Spanning the period from the age of empire to the era of globalization, the book shows how the “sugar question”—a label nineteenth-century economists coined for intense international debates on sugar production and trade—emerges repeatedly in new guises. Hollander uses the sugar question as a thread to stitch together past and present, local and global, in explaining Everglades transformation. “ Raising Cane in the ’ Glades is a sweeping tale of agrarian South Florida from the colonial era to the age of ethanol. It provides a relentless, sobering look at the partnership of ‘sweetness and power’: how the Sugar Barons cajoled, conspired, and conquered their way to supremacy in the region and how they forced the total makeover of the one of the greatest wetland systems on earth, from which the wild Everglades will likely never recover. Surely, this will be the definitive history of sugar and the Everglades for a long time to come.” -- Richard Walker, author of The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of California Agribusiness “A penetrating ecological account of the growth of Florida’s sugar industry, Raising Cane in the ‘Glades demonstrates eloquently how geography, economics and politics are historically interwoven. Gail Hollander’s analysis takes account of the regional and national pressures that conditioned, but could not suppress, local economic boosterism, and of those international factors that would repeatedly condition local outcomes. This is historical and economic geography of very high quality. At the same time, it offers a disillusioning vision of the way nature can be totally ignored in the scramble for profit. If anyone had doubts before about the profoundly politicized nature of sugar, through the centuries and to this day, this book should surely dispel them.” -- Sidney Mintz, author of Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History “ Raising Cane in the ’Glades beautifully realizes the promise of a truly political ecology.  Tracing the transformation of the Everglades from wetlands to an agro-industrial empire built on sugar, and maybe even back to wetlands again, Hollander shows how political struggles over subsidies, labor practices, and the environment come together to shape a landscape and its meanings. In compelling detail (and with compelling writing), Hollander traces out the local, regional, and national struggles, together with the global politics of the sugar trade, that have made the Everglades what they are, and what they might be. This is a book to keep on learning from.” -- Don Mitchell, Distinguished Professor of Geography, Syracuse University “Hollander’s exploration of the political ecology and cultural economy of Florida’s Everglades is an important and timely study. Unwilling to settle for a more ‘traditional’ analysis that would highlight just one aspect of this complex story (economy, or politics, or ecology, or culture), Hollander artfully balances these differing approaches to create a far more complex, but ultimately far more pointed, analysis of this highly disputed piece of human geography.  Essential reading for those interested in the contested politics of global agricultural systems, regionalism, race and class as they were played out in the shaping and reshaping of the Florida Everglades.” -- Mona Domosh, Dartmouth College “ Raising Cane in the ’Glades is a worthy successor to Sidney Mintz’s classic account of the rise of sugar as a global commodity in Sweetness and Power . Gail Hollander brings the sugar story home to the Florida Everglades where the story of ‘Big Sugar’ bears all the hallmarks of a sort of frontier capitalism. Hollander's compelling narrative and deep historical excavation reveals brilliantly how the sugar question and the astounding conversion of the Florida Everglades from a swamp wasteland to an endangered wetland are inextricably intertwined. In our addiction to sweetness lies, as Hollander reveals in her magisterial retelling of the hist