Florida Books

This is a super book by Jeff Klinkenberg. Any Floridian or anyone who loves Florida should read this book....as well as the others he has written.

Visitors to Florida will find some little-known hidey holes to explore in this book. Suburban Floridians can dream of the state's hidden wonders that Klinkenberg writes about -- and maybe be inspired to see them. Subtly hidden among the pages of stories, readers will learn the language of authentic Florida -- a "mess" of anything is just the right amount. Some of the people and places in the stories are lumpy, bumpy, and flawed. But they're all real.

I'm a big Jon land fan and have read all of his work, including last year's holiday novel HOPE MOUNTAIN. In the same tradition of HOPE MOUNTAIN, this novel is a great story and an excellent gift to give for anyone.

After a stint in Viet Nam, Mike Fontana returned home a changed person. He became an alcoholic, a spouse abuser, and ultimately a family deserter. He remarried, but that failed too as finally his wife left him and their son Joe. Mike straightened himself out to raise an ailing Joe, who recovered. Mike's mission in life is to open the Hope Key Dolphin Assisted Therapy Center in Florida because he believes that dolphins have a special knack to connect with special children that seem unreachable.

Katy Grant has lived a difficult life. When she issues bad checks, the court sentences her to two years in the county jail. Mike offers her an opportunity to perform six months community service at his facility in lieu of prison time. Katy accepts, planning to do nothing. However, Mike shocks her by admitting he is her father and wants to make amends. She reacts by deciding to turn his life into hell. She refuses to acknowledge the healing power of dolphins or that she likes her stepbrother. Only time will tell whether Katy is affected like so many before her.

Jon Land is a great storyteller because of his ability to escort his audience into the inner heart and soul of his characters and leave everyone with a message of hope. DOLPHIN KEY shows how successful dolphins are working with physically and mentally impaired children. However, the tale also focuses on second, third, and nth chances and how one must never give up no matter how hopeless it may seem. Fans desiring a life should read this story of renewal.

Harriet Klausner

For your grandkids or children or your classroom this book is terrific. And you will enjoy it as well. Best buy at Amazon for family reading.

I thought this book was terrific. I am a 7th - 12th grade school librarian and have had many students who enjoyed this book. I was surprised by the low age level (9-12) on...info about the book. Although good readers of those ages will enjoy the book, there are many themes that are only going to be grasped by people with a little more life experience. We are using the book in a high school psych class as an example of a "case study" of a dyslexic child. I was very moved by the relationship between Buddy and her grandfather. The relationship between Buddy and her father, fraught with difficulties rang true and allowed for some real character development as they both had to "grow up."

The struggle by blacks to obtain their civil rights in Florida is not well-known. In fact, many have seen blacks' efforts to obtain their civil rights there as weak and ineffectual after the Civil War only becoming powerful after World War I. Paul Ortiz supports his theme that blacks, in fact, engaged in generations-long efforts to force whites to recognize their basic civil rights by showing all of the methods they used to combat white racism and violence. He shows that blacks used organized groups as their most effective tool, including secret societies, lodges, churches, labor unions, black veterans' posts and women's groups to battle white racism and violence. Too, black women took a key role not only within most of these groups but also by individual efforts. By his employment of personal accounts including oral histories and personal interviews, as well as many other primary and secondary sources, he gives an in-depth account of the history of the continuous struggle by African-Americans for civil rights in Florida from antebellum times to the election of 1920.

Ortiz begins by showing that many blacks fled to the Spanish-owned colony of Florida prior to 1763 when it came under British rule. Escaped slaves, many from the British Carolinas, helped the Spanish fight against British forces then joined with Seminole Indians to battle United States militia or federal troops seeking to recapture escaped slaves and displace the Indians. Many escaped slaves settled in Gracie Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (Fort Mose), the first all black settlement in the future United States. This organized settlement showed that blacks must form groups for effective self protection and for mutual aid.

After regaining Florida from Britain following Britain's defeat in the American Revolution, Spain ceded it to the United States in 1819; it became a state in 1845. Before becoming a state, U.S. armed forces engaged in three wars resulting in the removal of most Seminole Indians and decreasing Florida's attraction as a haven for runaway slaves. Violence against blacks in Florida had its beginnings in these and earlier vicious battles. However, escaped slaves early use of Florida a destination was a precursor of later black attempts for freedom.

During the early Civil War, escaped slaves made desperate efforts to escape to Union ships and to Union lines and later many slaves joined the Union military to fight their former owners. After the largest battle in Florida at Olustee, some Confederate soldiers killed black Union prisoners continuing the legacy of violence against blacks and presaging the violence found during the generations following the war. But experience as soldiers fighting for their freedom helped many blacks after the war as they were forced to take up arms to defend themselves and fellow blacks.

After the war, blacks hoped that in addition to emancipation, they would find unfettered access to farmland, jobs, public schools and the right to vote. However, Reconstruction gave only limited success obtaining these goals but one of the most important was the formation of religious and other mutual aid groups for support. These early efforts at organizing were begun to counter the violence and terror whites employed to resubjugate the newly freed blacks.

Some of the early post Civil War groups promoted solidarity among blacks by celebrating Emancipation Day each January 1, and by having organized ceremonies honoring veterans. Other activities maintained and promoted black history of contributions blacks made to the U.S. including those made in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. In addition, efforts were made to ensure that memories of the horrors of slavery were not forgotten during these ceremonies. Black groups pursued every avenue in their quest to fight white domination and terrorism. Unions organized strikes and other actions to try to get better wages and working conditions as well as respect on the job. Churches and women's groups organized successful boycotts such as against segregated public transit during the streetcar boycotts in several Florida cities. Secret societies not only fostered mutual aid and respect but like many of the other groups provided for decent burials for their members and support for those who were ill.

Many blacks were often members of more than one group, e.g., one could be a member of a church, a union and a secret organization simultaneously. Ad hoc committees and groups were sometimes formed in response to volatile situations as in armed black responses to white vigilantes. As blacks made concerted efforts to enforce their suffrage rights under the 15th (and later the 19th) amendment, these already organized groups were immediately available as organizing centers and made them the logical places to which blacks could turn. They served as bases for political action groups since only through politics could blacks fight local, state and federal white racism as the established groups created spaces within which these new efforts could form and grow.

These groups were the fundamental bodies which formed black culture and society in Florida and when combined with the extraordinary efforts of black women, they were in the forefront of black resistance to white tyranny. Ortiz successfully shows that these groups were engaged for generations fighting against white racism and terror with more or less effect. The culmination of the various groups' efforts was the remarkable efforts made in the 1920 elections. Blacks were recruited, registered, and then escorted to polling locations but due to the pervasive efforts of whites including pervasive use of violence and intimidation through the KKK and local law enforcement authorities, opening of mail to detect black plans, unfair enforcement of election laws, poll taxes, and black vigilante actions, their efforts failed. Despite this failure the progress made by these groups and women in general was remarkable.

There are so many stereotypes perpetrated by mainstream history, especially when it comes to the facts surrounding the road to black freedom in Jim Crow America.

Paul Ortiz uses oral history, reseach of documents and investigative skills to write an outstanding book on the heroic work of blacks in challenging the white power structure in Florida from reconstruction to the bloody violence surrounding the 1920 election.

The white politicians in Florida used a variety of tools in attempting keep the black population in a subserviant position. These included terror and lynching, working with northern businesses and unions to cap the number of blacks leaving the state for better job opportunities and using the judicial system to have a pool of cheap labor sitting in jails.

Through it all, leaders from all walks of life emerged in the black community. Ortiz explains the various aspects surrounding the birth of black organizing and the small victories from boycotts, self-defense groups and other means to achieve the goal of having full rights under the law.

It ultimately centers on the right to vote and how the white power structure used every tool in its Jim Crow arsenal in 1920 to try and break the will of blacks and destoy the ever-expanding civil rights movement.

A time in U.S. History avoided in most books covering this time period, Ortiz again demonstrates that those who forget the past can never set a true course in the future. Emancipation Betrayed is an important book for those seeking the truth surrounding this nation in a proper historical context.

I hope that Larry Shriner publishes more! His book grabbed my attention on the first page and I couldn't stop turning the pages! I love his work.

This book should receive a lot of attention. Shriner has done his homework. It is refreshing to read a novel that does not fill space with four-letter words and sex. I hope to read more of his novels.

Edwards does a magnificient job in taking one from Wittgenstein's early work in the Tractatus through his later work in the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty. It is the clearest and most accesible book to those who want to understand Wittgenstein. The book, while accessible to all, would probably be difficult for someone who has had no exposure to his writings. I recommend it as a must read to truly grasp his philosophy and to understand other philosophers as well, i.e., Derrida, Heidegger, et. al.

I've read several dozen books about Wittgenstein's views, and although each has something useful or incisive to say, only Edwards' book hits the nail on the head. Finally, someone gets Wittgenstein right. I would recomend A.C. Grayling's book as an introduction, then Edward's book, and Genova's "Ways of Seeing" and then maybe books on Zen Buddhism and Native American/pre-agricultural beliefs to fill out variations on Wittgensteinian themes.

Everglades Forever: Restoring America's Great Wetland by Trish Marx is impressively presented for young readers augmented by photojournalist Cindy Karp's vivid photography. In Everglades Forever, children will learn of a class study by the students of an elementary school class on the majestic wetlands in Homestead, Florida. They will learn of the negative effects of pollution and disrupted water flow, and how people, environmental agencies, and governments seek to control such damage. And they will learn of the Everglades Restoration Plan, an ecological intervention designed to restore and preserve the natural water flow, plants, and animals of the Everglades. A highly edcuational and conscientious-minded introduction to one of Earth's environmental wonders, is especially recommended for school and community library Environmental Studies collections for children.

Trish Marx takes us on an exciting trip through the Everglades, where we learn painlessly about an area unique in the world, a eco-system that is really "a wide, slow-moving river," filled with plants and animal life found nowhere else on Earth! Our fellow travellers are students from a school perched on the eastern edge of this environment. As fifth-graders Robert, Tiler, Vedantee and Conrado begin to appreciate the significance of their neighborhood and want to participate in preserving it, so do we.

Marx has done a first-rate job of involving young readers in the
preservation and restoration of the Everglades. This award-winning book should have a place in the ecology section of every library. Photographer Karp's images enhance and complement the the text.

First a brief introduction: From 1986 - 1992 I was employed as an investigator at the Office of Capital Collateral Representative (CCR) in Tallahassee, Florida, where Scharlette Holdman worked as the supervisor of the investigators from October 1985 - March 1988.

I have known Scharlette since the mid-1970s. Her office, the Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice, was in the same wing of the Petroleum Building as my office at Common Cause in Florida, where I volunteered.

The Petroleum Building was next to the State Capital, the Florida Supreme Court and the State Archives and Library. When it was torn down, the Petroleum Building space and the space for the first CCR office became the Mary Brogan Art and Science Museum and a condominium. The Petroleum Building was called by those of us who worked or volunteered there the "Forces of Good" (FOG) Building -- as opposed to FOE -- Forces of Evil, such as Associated Industries, the Chamber and other big business interests in Florida. The FOG building also included (not an exhaustive list) the Clean Water Action Project, the ACLU, NOW, Florida Legal Services, Migrant Farmworker's Organization (directed by Cliff Thaell, who has more recently been a Leon County Commissioner for over ten years), Mike Vasilinda's television news service.

David von Drehle's excellent book "Among the Lowest of the Dead" provides the best history and analysis of the Florida death penalty, with Michael Mello's books a close second. Part of each of these books is about Scharlette Holdman. A bit of the negative aspects:

When Scharlette had essentially declared war upon CCR in 1987 and thereafter, some of us decided to investigate her background given some things that we had heard. Low and behold, Scharlette's claim of a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii and a Master's Degree from Memphis State (now University of Memphis) don't exist. A claimed undergraduate degree from Memphis State: I no longer recall if this was confirmed by the university.

We used Scharlette's Social Security number, her maiden name and her married name -- with all this information, both universities had no record of Scharlette having received any degrees from these institutions.

As I understand Scharlette, she needed the "degrees" to confer upon her "credentials" that she really never needed as she is indeed then and now a national expert on capital mitigation, litigation, etc. However Scharlette can be deceptive, as her lack of a PhD and Masters so demonstrates. Even today she claims to have the degrees as when she gives presentations regarding capital cases, she is identified as "Dr." A key word search of her name will bring up some of the presentations that she has made in the past several years with the title "Dr." preceding her name.

If she has received any honorary or other degrees since 1990, that would be new information for me. If so, please let me know: P.O. Box 38458, Tallahassee, FL 32315-8458.

This book is very informative and provides the reader with amazing detail of how the justice system works.

Although this book really wasn't designed as a field guide (i.e. field use), its functional role in reptile and amphibian literature pertaining to the exotics of Florida is just that. In other words, it beats everything else currently out there on the subject and should be carried in the field. The pictures are decent (though not great) and there are very helpful county maps for each species, along with species descriptions, similar species comparisons, histories of introductions, habitat and habits details (very useful), diet information, known predators, and reproduction data, if available. I would have been completely lost on a recent herping trip to Florida if I didn't have this book with me to identify the non-natives I encountered. Although other Florida exotic publications exist, this one is the most current and I'd say the best. Beware that most field guides include only a small portion of the species this book encompasses. This is a must-have for anyone herping in Florida.

Meshaka, Butterfield, and Hauge accurately and comprehensively described the many species of introduced herpetofauna that have found there way into the Florida ecosystem. A great supplement to any field guide, this book answers many of those "Why isn't this thing in Petersons?" questions that have plagued many a herper traveling through Florida. Complete with maps outlining known localities of specific species, some fine photography, as well as historical perspectives on these introduced species, this book has not only found its way into the field with me, but has also made its way to my coffee table. I hope this spark causes a wildfire of descriptive field guides which begin to accurately identify and bring attention to the growing concern of introduced species throughout the United States.

For a busy work-at-home writer, wife and mom of three like me, Family Fun in Florida makes the perfect travel companion. When our family heads to Florida we can save precious time pre-planning our trip based on the interesting, educational and fun locations mapped out for us in this book that is a must-have for the Florida-bound. It was exciting reading the wonderfully rich details about the diverse locations that are featured. And I am very glad to learn, via one of the many informative side-bars inserted throughout the text, that shark bites aren't as common in real life as they are in the movies. Also, knowing that Jan Godown's 9 year-old daughter helped research the book gives me confidence that many of the locations are definitely packed with kid-appeal.

M. LaVora Perry, author of Taneesha's Treasures of the Heart

Are you a family living in Florida? Do you plan on visiting Florida? Get this book! Grandparents, get this book! Do you get lots of out-of-town/state visitors? Get this book!

Jan Godown found every fun place in the state of Florida for this book. She describes the sites, gives directions, contact information, and lots of other great info for you and your family. She even lets you know when is a good time to visit and how to avoid the crowds.

Best of all, she didn't just lock herself away in a room to write this book, she used her family as the test subjects. Her nine year old daughter as well as a page full of helpers gave her insights into what worked and didn't work for kids.

Did I mention that you should get this book?