Writer, ornithologist, educator, and conservationist James A. Kushlan is a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution; director of Patuxent Wildlife Research Center; professor of biology at the University of Mississippi and Texas A&M, Commerce; and wildlife biologist with the U.S. National Park Service. He has published 10 books, most recently Seeking the American Tropics: South Florida’s Early Naturalists. For Everglades National Park (Images of America) (Arcadia Pub (Sc)), a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the dedication of the park, Kushlan collaborated with author and wildlife photographer Kirsten Hines to celebrate this vast and mysterious place, inaccessible for centuries. The courtship plumes of the egrets decorating ladies’ hats jump-started the movement to save the wetlands; today much of this landscape is indeed now protected within Everglades National Park. Dedicated in 1947, it receives nearly a million visitors every year. They come to experience its alligators, crocodiles, Florida panthers, anhingas, roseate spoonbills, and egrets – and also hear the stories of the indigenous Tequesta, Spanish and British colonialists, pioneer settlers, Mikasuki-speaking Native Americans – and the soldiers who sought to expel them.