Gary R. Mormino – författare

When actions of the past clash with the values of today.Millard Fillmore Caldwell (1897–1984) was once considered one of the greatest Floridians of his generation. Yet today he is known for his inability to adjust to the racial progress of the modern world. In this biography, leading Florida historian Gary Mormino tackles the difficult question of how to remember yesterday's heroes who are now known to have had serious flaws.The last Florida governor born in the nineteenth century and the first to govern in the atomic age, Caldwell was beloved in his time for leading the state through the hard years of World War II. He was wildly successful in a political career that may never be matched, serving as governor, congressman, state legislator, and chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. He passed important educational reform legislation. But his attitudes toward race and citizenship strike Americans today as embarrassing, if not shocking. He refused to address black leaders by their titles. He argued for segregated bomb shelters. And he accepted lynching as part of the southern way of life.Mormino measures the contributions of Caldwell alongside his glaring faults, discussing his complicated role in shaping modern Florida. In the current debates surrounding public memorials and historical memory in the United States, Millard Fillmore Caldwell is a timely example of one man's contested legacy.

A leading Florida historian explores one of the state’s most consequential eras. It was a time of stunning episodes of boom andbust, an era of extremes, a decade of historic changes that point to Florida’sfuture. In this book, eminent historian Gary Mormino illuminates earlytwenty-first-century Florida and its connections to some of the mostsignificant events in contemporary American history. Following Mormino’s milestone work Land ofSunshine, State of Dreams, which details the dynamic history ofFlorida from 1950 to 2000, Dreams in the New Century explores the state’s tumultuous next chapter, a period that included the Bushv. Gore election, 9/11, the housing bubble and Great Recession, and theelection of Barack Obama. During these years the Elián González story engrossedthe country, Tim Tebow rose to football fame, and Donald Trump became a Floridacelebrity. From hurricanes to Ponzi schemes, red tides, climate change, the “Stand-Your-Ground” gun law, demographic diversity, and more, Florida offerednonstop news fodder that reflected its extraordinary internal trends and itsimportance in the nation. As Mormino shows, Florida is a place ofdeep conflicts—North and South, liberal and conservative, newcomer and local,growth and conservation—with histories that can be traced back centuries. In2000‒2010, Mormino argues, these tensions collided to produce a “Big Bang” thatwill continue to resonate in years to come. Mormino takes stock of thiscrucible of change and explains the social, cultural, and political intricaciesof a state the world struggles to understand. Dreams in the NewCentury unravels Florida’s complicated recent history in a gripping,informative, and fascinating narrative.