Dance of the Reptiles: Rampaging Tourists, Marauding Pythons, Larcenous Legislators, Crazed Celebrities, and Tar-Balled Beaches: Selected Columns

You probably know Hiaasen’s work from his numerous novels and children’s books, but he’s also a weekly contributor to The Miami Herald, where his columns offer hilarious, passionate, and caustic analysis of political idiocy, environmental abuse, governmental chicanery, and appalling subjects of all sorts.

Dance of the Reptiles is the third collection of his columns for the Miami Herald, covering the last twelve years and chronicling dozens of topics, both national and Florida-specific. But as funny as he is – often brutally so, like in his article about BP’s new 10-year-old advisor for the Deepwater Horizon spill or his secret editor’s notes for Sarah Palin’s book Going Rogue – he is even more impressive when outraged.

It’s so easy to be worn down by the ridiculousness of modern politics, the excess and abuse of Big Business, or the horrifying sensationalism that accompanies every news story, but that cynicism, that defeatism, that exhausted acceptance of these things hasn’t taken Hiaasen. He still cares about the environment, about the schools, about better governance and a brighter future, and that hope infuses even his most vitriolic columns.

Come for the humor, stay for the insight. There’s plenty of each in Dance of the Reptiles.