Florida Sand Dollar Books – serie

These charming tales of Florida in the early nineteenth century were brought to the attention of the University of Florida Press by the late Archie Carr, Florida's preeminent naturalist, who believed they evoked a place, a time, and a way of life that belonged in print again. The Florida peninsula in the 1830s was covered by flatwoods, swamps of giant cypress, and hammocks of cabbage palm and live oak trees. The land teemed with panther, black bear, wild hogs, and white ibis. Writing with clarity and elegance, Whitehead weaves his descriptions of this landscape into an old-fashioned, hair-raising adventure story.

Now in a new paperback edition, Samuel Proctor's popular biography was first described as "a lusty narrative of a lusty age." Revealing the politics and intrigues of frontier Florida in the period still known as the "Broward Era," Proctor describes the life and liberal administration of Napoleon Bonaparte Broward (1857-1910), elected governor of Florida in 1904.

This work traces the origins of the Hillsborough River, in Florida, to prehistoric times, chronicles the arrivals of the conquistadores, the missionaries, and the marauders greedy for civilizing and for treasure, and points out how contemporary ambitions could destroy the environment.

A wandering Floridian who made his way home in the early 1970s, John Rothchild writes about the state with the savvy of a native and the perspective of an outsider. His personal and historical travelogue reads alternately like a litany of 20th-century ills and a Monty Python rendering of the Great American Dream. In Florida, both versions are true.Settled through the chicanery of a few enterprising brokers and real estate wizards, Rothchild’s Florida is a civilization built from scratch, out of the most unusual ingredients. While much of the state seems younger than many of its inhabitants, he observes, it hosts all the modern demographic, economic, and social problems. Still, those ills don’t dispel the magic of its sunshine, beaches, and exotic fauna or undermine its status as a great American myth.Told within the framework of Rothchild’s travels from Miami to the Everglades, around the state and back again, Up for Grabs is part history, part travelogue, part journalism, part autobiography-a humorous and appreciative tour of a society fabricated from a state of mind and erected on land that was "ninety percent underwater ninety percent of the time."

John Rothchild , a former editor of Washington Monthly, columnist for Time and Fortune, and contributor to Esquire, Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, is author or coauthor of nine books, including A Fool and His Money and Voice of the River, the autobiography of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. He lives in Miami Beach, Florida.