Download or read book Backroads of Paradise written by Cathy Salustri and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1930s, the Federal Writers' Project sent mostly anonymous writers, but also Zora Neale Hurston and Stetson Kennedy, into the depths of Florida to reveal its splendor to the world. The FWP and the State of Florida jointly published the results as Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, which included twenty-two driving tours of the state's main roads. Eventually, after Eisenhower built the interstates, drivers bypassed the small towns that thrived along these roads in favor of making better time. Those main roads are now the state's backroads—forgotten by all but local residents, a few commuters, and dedicated road-trippers. Retracing the original routes in the Guide, Cathy Salustri rekindles our notions of paradise by bringing a modern eye to the historic travelogues. Salustri's 5,000-mile road trip reveals a patchwork quilt of Florida cultures: startling pockets of history and environmental bliss stitched against the blight of strip malls and franchise restaurants. The journey begins on US 98, heading west toward the Florida/Alabama state line, where coastal towns dot the roadway. Here, locals depend on the tourism industry, spurred by sugar sand beaches, as well as the abundance of local seafood. On US 41, Salustri takes us past the state's only whitewater rapids, a retired carnie town, and a dazzling array of springs, swamps, and rivers interspersed with farms that produce a bounty of fruit. Along US 17, she stops for milkshakes and hamburgers at Florida's oldest diner and visits a collection of springs interconnected by underwater mazes tumbling through white spongy limestone, before stopping in Arcadia, where men still bring cattle to auction. Desperately searching for skunk apes, the Sunshine State's version of Bigfoot, she encounters more than one gator on her way through the Everglades, Ochopee, and the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters. Following the original Guide, Salustri crisscrosses the state from the panhandle to the Keys. She guides readers through forgotten and unknown corners of the state--nude beaches, a rattlesnake cannery, Devil's Millhopper in Gainesville--as well as more familiar haunts--Kennedy Space Center and The Villages, "Florida’s Friendliest Retirement Hometown." Woven through these journeys are nuggets of history, environmental debates about Florida's future, and a narrative that combines humor with a strong affection for an oft-maligned state. Today, Salustri urges, tourists need a new nudge to get off the interstates or away from Disney in order to discover the real Florida. Her travel narrative, following what are now backroads and scenic routes, guides armchair travelers and road warriors alike to historic sites, natural wonders, and notable man-made attractions--comparing the past views with the present landscape and commenting on the changes, some barely noticeable, others extreme, along the way.

Download or read book A Storied Tour of Florida written by G. Alan Brooks and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen stand-alone short stories that take place in Florida which contain both country yarns and city tales. They include a delightful array of interesting characters; both good people and unsavory scoundrels from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures. Many have a surprise ending with a twist that often changes the readers early opinion of the main participants. The yarns and tales illuminate the diversity of people and places that reach from the Florida panhandle to the keys. The authors view of Florida includes a large rural component with old-fashion country values and customs.

Download or read book Nine Florida Stories by Marjory Stoneman Douglas written by Marjory Stoneman Douglas and published by . This book was released on 1990-03-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A collection of tales boiling with real estate dealers, egret poachers, rumrunners, mango growers, sportsmen, land grubbers, murderers, and mosquitoes. First printed in The Saturday Evening Post during the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, these stories constitute a rip-snorting glimpse back to a South Florida that now exists only in memory."--Miami Herald"Reflects the same concerns found in her better-known non-fiction work--a fascination with the beauty of Florida and a warning against its imminent destruction."--Tallahassee DemocratThe subjects that would fire Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s enthusiasm for the rest of her life first appeared in her short fiction published in the 1920s. Florida’s most celebrated environmentalist, the author of The Everglades: River of Grass, wrote even then about protecting South Florida’s fragile ecosystem and the state’s endangered species, about the dangers of short-sighted land development, and about Florida history. The nine stories in this first collection take place in a scattering of South Florida settings--Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, the Tamiami Trail, the Keys, the Everglades—and reveal the drama of hurricanes and plane crashes, of kidnappers, escaped convicts, and smugglers. Editor Kevin McCarthy relates each story to Douglas’s life and points out the autobiographical touches which surface frequently in her stories.

Download or read book Finding Florida written by T. D. Allman and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a comprehensive look at the history of the state of Florida, from its discovery, exploration, and settlement through its becoming a state, to notable events in the early twenty-first century.

Download or read book Florida written by Lauren Groff and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Magnificent . . . Lauren Groff is a virtuoso' Emily St John Mandel 'A blistering collection . . . lyrical and oblique' Guardian 'Not to be missed . . . deep and dark and resonant' Ann Patchett 'It's beautiful. It's giving me rich, grand nightmares' Observer In these vigorous stories, Lauren Groff brings her electric storytelling to a world in which storms, snakes and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life, but the greater threats are of a human, emotional and psychological nature. Among those navigating it all are a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple; a searching, homeless woman; and an unforgettable conflicted wife and mother. Florida is an exploration of the connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury. 'Innovative and terrifyingly relevant. Any one of these stories is a bracing read; together they form a masterpiece' Stylist 'Lushly evocative . . . mesmerising . . . a writer whose turn of phrase can stop you on your tracks' Financial Times

Download or read book A Land Remembered written by Patrick D. Smith and published by Pineapple PressInc. This book was released on 2001 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the story of the MacIvey family of Florida from 1858 to 1968.

Download or read book Homegrown in Florida written by William McKeen and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2012-09-23 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Florida can seem like a child's dream of paradise: endless sunny days, trips to the beach to swim and build sandcastles, bike riding without a jacket in the middle of January, and magical themeparks only a short drive away. But what was life really like for those who grew up here? During a recent reunion, writers Bill McKeen, Tim Dorsey, and Jeff Klinkenberg found themselves lamenting that so many of their childhood memories were fading away. For them, and for many, Florida is not just a place people go to, it’s where they come from. That can mean many things to many people, as the stellar cast of writers, journalists, and musicians eloquently reveal in Homegrown in Florida. This utterly satisfying and powerful anthology aims at the heart of the glories of childhood and the pain of growing up. Both a celebration of the exotic, untamed wilderness of a youth filled with moss-draped oaks and citrus fields, evergreen winters and palmetto fronds, and a reminder that innocence often gave way to experience as bike paths became private developments, and swimming holes were paved over by interstates, Homegrown in Florida is filled with tears and laughter alike. Featuring contributions from Carl Hiaasen, Tom Petty, Zora Neale Hurston, Michael Connelly, and many more, this is a book for every child of old Florida, and every child at heart.

Download or read book Florida Bay Forever written by Daniel A Burkhardt and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book In the Land of Good Living written by Kent Russell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wickedly smart, funny, and irresistibly off-kilter account of an improbable thousand-mile journey on foot into the heart of modern Florida, the state that Russell calls "America Concentrate." In the summer of 2016, Kent Russell--broke, at loose ends, hungry for adventure--set off to walk across Florida. Mythic, superficial, soaked in contradictions, maligned by cultural elites, segregated from the South, and literally vanishing into the sea, Florida (or, as he calls it: "America Concentrate") seemed to Russell to embody America's divided soul. The journey, with two friends intent on filming the ensuing mayhem, quickly reduces the trio to filthy drifters pushing a shopping cart of camera equipment. They get waylaid by a concerned citizen bearing a rifle; buy cocaine from an ex-wrestler; visit a spiritual medium. The narrative overflows with historical detail about how modern Florida came into being after World War II, and how it came to be a petri dish for life in a suddenly, increasingly diverse new land of minority-majority cities and of unrivaled ethnic and religious variety. Russell has taken it all in with his incomparably focused lens and delivered a book that is both an inspired travelogue and a profound rumination on the nation's soul--and his own. It is a book that is wildly vivid, encyclopedic, erudite, and ferociously irreverent--a deeply ambivalent love letter to his sprawling, brazenly varied home state.

Download or read book Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators written by Jeff Klinkenberg and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the personality of Florida, the places and the people.

Download or read book Florida Ghost Stories written by Robert R. Jones and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories of ghosts and spirits and tall tales of strange happenings fill this volume. If they don't give you goose bumps and make your hair stand on end, at least they will offer you food for thought. There are two stories of Indian legends from Silver Springs, stories of hauntings in the little town of Micanopy, an encounter with a specter at Fort Clinch near Fernandina, the tale of a ghost in the Castillo in St. Augustine, the legend of the choir boy who sings from beneath a church swimming pool in Jacksonville, and many more. Enough to keep you up at night reading—if you dare!

Download or read book The Florida Water Story written by Peggy Sias Lantz and published by Pineapple Press Inc. This book was released on 1998 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follows the water cycle through four major Florida habitats, wetlands, oceans, coastlines, and coral reefs.

Download or read book Haunted Florida Love Stories written by Christopher Balzano and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wide eyes, sweaty palms and a racing heart. Are these the tell-tale marks of a love story or a haunted tale? If the story is set in Florida, there's a good chance it's both. From the infamous Bellamy Bridge to a haunted lighthouse in Key West, love is in the air--but it isn't always a good thing. Author and folklorist Christopher Balzano follows lingering campus whispers and trails that vanish into the swamp to track down the urban legends and ghostly lore of Sunshine State love affairs that live on even after death.

Download or read book Love Stories of Punta Gorda written by Eve Sylvie Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-25 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love Stories of Punta Gorda is a collection of four romance stories set in Charlotte Harbor. The stories date as far back as 1539 to the Victorian era and up until World War II. These entertaining tales are a fusion of history, folklore and imagination.

Download or read book An Early Florida Adventure Story written by Andrés de San Miguel (fray) and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Among documents of Florida's Spanish colonial period, few eyewitness accounts exist. One of these, the 1595 narrative by Fray Andres de San Miguel, translated by John Hann, describes the two-year odyssey of a teenager from Spain across the Atlantic to Mexico, Havana, and Florida and finally back to Spain. The future friar's account of his experiences as a young sailor brings to life the fleets of the Golden Age of Spain and reveals how those adventures would change his life forever. It also provides vivid information about the Indians of the Georgia and Florida coast." "After Andres's ship passed Cape Canaveral, it was battered by a four-day storm and separated from the fleet. The officers comandeered the only launch and escaped; the crew kept the ship afloat and improvised a box-like vessel in which 30 survivors reached shore near the mouth of the Altamaha River - more dead than alive for lack of food and water. The author offers detailed descriptions of the Guale Indians and of Mission San Pedro Mocama on Cumberland Island. He also provides vignettes of life in St. Augustine and, on his way to Havana, of encounters with South Florida Indians who came out to trade and with a gentlemanly English pirate. The adventure closes with Fray Andres's return to Cadiz, where he witnessed the 1596 British siege and burning of that port." "Only seventeen years old at the time of the voyage, Fray Andres presents a cold-eyed view of the sailing experience in the 16th century, trenchant observations on the behavior of the ship's officers and the circumstances of the survival of the crew, and insight into the ambitions, concerns, and religiosity of the Spaniards. The book includes Hann's translation of a brief introductory essay written by Fray Andres's Mexican publisher, telling of the young man's entry into the Carmelites and the accomplishments of his later life as a church architect, builder, and hydrographic expert involved in the drainage of the valley of Mexico City."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Sunshine Champs A Story About Florida written by Karen Latchana Kenney and published by ABDO. This book was released on 2008-08-15 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fun combination of original fable and factual information introduces young readers to the state of Florida through an entertaining and educational story based on the state symbols, history and geography. Take a trip through Florida as Alex, the alligator helps his baseball team with the league. Along the way Alex learns about the animals, plants, geography, and culture that make Florida a great state! In addition to the illustrated story, interesting and informative factual sidebars about the state are found throughout the book. A treasure-hunt map plots the journey and a cultural recipe is also included. This book ends with state facts at a glance, a reading comprehension quiz, and more things to see and do around Florida with a map showing the locations. This title is a great way to explore Florida in preparation for state reports or family vacations! Super Sandcastle is an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.

Download or read book Jews of Florida Centuries of Stories written by Marcia Jo Zerivitz and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first comprehensive history of the Jews of Florida from colonial times to the present is a sweeping tapestry of voices. Despite not being officially allowed to live in Florida until 1763, Jewish immigrants escaping expulsions and exclusions were among the earliest settlers. They have been integral to every facet of Florida's growth, from tilling the land and developing early communities to boosting tourism and ultimately pushing mankind into space. The Sunshine State's Jews, working for the common good, have been Olympians, Nobel Prize winners, computer pioneers, educators, politicians, leaders in business and the arts and more, while maintaining their heritage to help ensure Jewish continuity for future generations. This rich narrative - accompanied by 700 images, most rarely seen - is the result of three-plus decades of grassroots research by author Marcia Jo Zerivitz, giving readers an incomparable look at the long and crucial history of Jews in Florida.