PALM BEACH ZOO WILL PRESENT MICHAEL GRUNWALD AT
CONSERVATION LEADERSHIP LECTURE
Sponsored by Florida Crystals Corporation
WEST PALM BEACH, FL, October 15, 2012 – The Palm Beach Zoo has announced plans to bring award-winning author and 
journalist Michael Grunwald to speak at the annual Conservation Leadership Lecture on Thursday, November 15th at The Breakers Palm Beach. Grunwald will speak on his critically-acclaimed book The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, which received the first-ever gold medal for nonfiction at the Florida Book Awards. The lecture will be sponsored by Florida Crystals Corporation. The evening event will begin with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at 6:30 p.m. followed by Grunwald’s lecture at 7:30 p.m. Guests will have the opportunity to meet the author at a book-signing and coffee and sweets reception following the lecture. The event is by invitation only.
Palm Beach Zoo president and CEO, Andrew Aiken said, “We are proud to bring Michael Grunwald to address the critical issues of environmental protection and habitat preservation. Our mission is to protect wildlife and wildlife habitat, and to inspire others to value and conserve the natural world. One way in which we advance this conservation mission is by informing and educating the public on important developments in national and international conservation, species survival, and habitat protection. Our Conservation Leadership Lecture Series focuses on some of the most exciting and important current thinking on these topics.”
Award-winning author and journalist Michael Grunwald has been a senior national correspondent for Time magazine since 2007, writing cover stories on topics including biofuels, the future of California, the decline of the Republican Party, and Person of the Year: Ben Bernanke.
The Swamp is a riveting journey from the Ice Age to the present, illuminating the natural, social and political history of one of America’s most beguiling but least understood patches of land that has come to represent so much more than itself. Currently the largest environmental restoration project in the history of the world is taking place and it is being used as the blueprint for projects across the globe. It is the revival of the Everglades—the most famous wetlands on the planet. With the rebuilding of the region affected by Hurricane Katrina making news, the history and future of environmentalism is more important than ever. The Everglades is a shining example of humankind’s struggle to undo the damage it has done and the consequences of our actions. It is home to over 7 million residents with 40 million annual tourists visiting each year, South Florida is America’s premiere vacation destination.
Grunwald is an in-demand speaker on the subjects of the Everglades, New Orleans, the environment, politics, economics, and finance for universities, conferences, corporations, and environmental groups. He is also a respected authority on general energy and climate issues for civic and business groups, as well as events and conferences focused on alternative energy.
Grunwald has won the George Polk Award for national reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting and many other journalism honors. In September 2008, his investigation of the flooding of New Orleans won the Understanding Government Foundation’s $50,000 journalism prize, which he donated to hurricane victims. He has also contributed to The New Republic, Slate, The Washington Monthly and Foreign Policy magazines; he has appeared on CNN, PBS, NPR, MSNBC and many other media outlets.
A graduate of Harvard, Grunwald previously spent six years as a staff writer for the Boston Globe, and then nine years as a staff writer for the Washington Post. Grunwald is married to Cristina Dominguez, a former lawyer who now owns a Marimekko store in Miami’s Design District. They live in South Beach with their son Max and their Boston terriers, Shamu and Candy.