In 1912, a Congressional committee met to investigate allegations that the Secretary of Agriculture had suppressed a report by J. O. Wright on drainage in the Florida Everglades. The following seven months of committee hearings uncovered a veritable horror-show of corruption, self-dealing, misuse of government personnel and property for private gain, the tarring of reputations in order to protect high-level officials, and outright blackmail within the Department of Agriculture and the state governments of Florida and North Carolina. The "Wright Report Incident" is most commonly understood in its connection to the Everglades, and few histories have included its effects on the North Carolina Pocosin wetland and other coastal plain swamps. This book seeks fills that gap. It details the timeline, intricate politics, and webs of corruption that make up the story of the Wright Incident and, specifically, its connection to land management practices in coastal North Carolina that continue to impact the industries of the state almost 100 years later.

In 1915, the road system in south Florida had changed little since before the Civil War. Travelling from Miami to Ft. Myers meant going through Orlando, 250 miles north of Miami. Within 15 years, three highways were dredged and blasted through the Everglades: Ingraham Highway from Homestead, 25 miles south of Miami, to Flamingo on the tip of the peninsula; Tamiami Trail from Miami to Tampa; and Conner's Highway from West Palm Beach to Okeechobee City. In 1916, Florida's road commission spent $967. In 1928 it spent $6.8 million. Tamiami Trail, originally projected to cost $500,000, eventually required $11 million. These roads were made possible by the 1920s Florida land boom, the replacement of animal and steam-powered implements with gasoline and diesel-powered equipment, and the creation of a highway funding system based on fuel taxes. This book tells the story of the finance and technology of first modern highways in the South.

In November 1963, a British inventor and reluctant industrialist named Alex Moulton introduced a radical new small-wheeled, dual suspension bicycle at the Earl's Court Cycle Show in London. It was covered in several articles by Reyner Banham, an architecture and design critic and associate editor of Architectural Review and Architects' Journal. Banham believed that the Moulton Bicycle would give rise to "a new class of cyclists," young urban radicals who would cycle out of choice, and not out of need, the traditional clientele for the bicycle industry prior to the war. After selling about 100,000 units Moulton was forced by economic circumstances to sell his small firm to Raleigh, England's largest cycle maker, in 1967. Production of the original ended in 1970. Alex Moulton revived his firm in the 1980's with an even more radical spaceframe model, the AM, that remains in production even after Alex Moulton's death in 2015. Largely because of Banham's writings, the Moulton has started to be taken seriously by technological historians and industrial design historians. The AM series is very expensive - some models cost over $15,000-and this has led some mechanically savvy cyclists to make their own "hot rod" compact bicycles out of the small wheeled, relatively inexpensive, utility bicycles of the 1970s (called "Shoppers") that were inspired by the Moulton's small-wheeled popularity. Ironically, this was also foreseen by Banham (who died in 1988), who considered the hot-rod Model Ts and Chevy Bel Aires of the 1950s "America's first folk art of the mechanical era." This book follows the intertwined lives of two very different men, both unusually creative, who had an extraordinary impact on each others' careers, given that they met, at most, three or four times, and never had a professional relationship of any kind.