Florida Books

Just a great book about the University of Florida football team. Everything you could possibly want to know. The author does a fabulous recanting Gator Tales.

This is simply *the* definitive history of the University of Florida football program, from its inception through the 1973 season. No other work even approaches its depth and breadth as it chronicles every season, every big game, and every notable figure in the program. Check the acknowledgments for virtually any more recent book that involves Gator football, even at least one written by a Georgia grad, and you will find almost reverential reference to this work.

An absolutely essential addition to the library of any Gator.

Attorney (and Social Worker) Robin Bodiford of Fort Lauderdale has been crucially instrumental in making her home county of Broward the most progressive in the red (or dare we think purple state of Florida.) By way of her efforts, gay citizens in Broward County have greater legal protections than in any other county statewide. This particular article of hers, points out most excellently the atrociousness (more to the harm of needy children than to the gay community,) of the present state of Florida Law. May such efforts as hers, which point out the backwards and cruel effects of southern bigotry, which continue alive and all-too-well in Florida, soon change the tide!

Paul David Nelson does seem to make a solid living at chronicling the lives of secondary figures of the American Revolution. Yet one can not ignore his works. There are few biographers with his skill and ability.

Nelson's look at the life of James Grant proves useful and readable. Grant remains one of those obscure English figures who popped up all over North America in the 18th century. A proud son of Scotland, Grant worked his way up the military ladder after service in Europe. During the French and Indian war, Grant would lead one failed mission at Fort Duquesne (which would lead to his capture), a more succesful one in South Carolina against the Creeks, and spend time in the islands. From 1763 until 1771, Grant served as an able governor of East Florida. After his service in Saint Augustine, Grant headed to England where he served in Parliment before serving as a major general in the American Revolution. While retaining a low opinion of the militia, Grant did see some success as one of his friend William Howe's chief tactical officers, planning the battles of Brooklyn and White Plains though he never quite was able to land the knockout blow. Having said that, Grant's star rose after Henry Clinton's fell with Howe (for a detailed analysis of the odd relationship of Howe and Clinton, see Wilcox's classic "Portrait of a General"). After Howe was recalled, Grant did excellent work for his cause at St. Lucia.

The only real problem is the book seems a bit too short at points. The Florida years for example seem rather rushed. Otherwise, Nelson shows how a Scottish second son could rise to prominence in 18th century England. Nelson is able to catch Grant's personality to some extent. This obese soldier liked the high life and could be stubborn and somewhat cantakerous yet still something of a social creature. Nelson also did a great deal of work with the primary sources. While Grant may be more than a bit obscure, he does come to life in this excellent, though short, biography.

Searcy's book is a welcome and much needed addition to the early Revolutionary War period along the southern front. Her exhaustive research covers the turmoil along the Georgia-Florida border during 1776-1778 and its repercussions on the eventual outcome of the American Revolution. Her sweeping historical narrative ranges from the decisions made in the Continental Congress to the devastating effects on the settlers from the constant raids, skirmishes, and battles between the Georgia patriots and the Florida loyalists. The book can be read for historic detail or as an informative and interesting narrative or both. It certainly rates a place on any bookshelf to complememnt the considerable literature on the Revolutionary War in the northern colonies during this period.

This book has a lively and entertaining cast of characters that keep the pages turning from start to finish - it's a mix of entertainment and Florida Keys history. A perfect book for a few days on the beach or poolside.

This book is full of great tips from what to look for when choosing a Realtor, to how to get your home ready to sell, and much, much more. Even though I've bought and sold 5 homes, I found out just how much I didn't know. Whether a buyer or seller, you'll enjoy the straight-forward, interesting style of this book while gaining valuable insight that can save you time as well as money.

Dance is a notoriously difficult art to capture and hold onto. Even film rarely serves it well. Odd then that Rosalie O'Connor's incandescent photographs of her friends and colleagues at ABT as they rehearse, prepare, and perform should erupt so spontaneously with movement and emotion. I don't know why this should be: maybe it's her artist's eye; maybe it's her steady hand; maybe it's her obvious rapport with dancers, her knowledge and love of dance; maybe it's just incredible good luck. Whatever the reason, the results are astonishingly beautiful and present in this book. The accompanying text, by Ms. O'Connor and some of her subjects, is a wonderful bonus that both illuminates and grounds the images, even as they take flight. My only quibble is with the paper stock the University Press of Florida chose for this remarkable offering: it allows us to enjoy Ms. O'Connor's art, that's true enough; but it certainly doesn't do that art justice.

As a newcomer to the area, I enjoyed learning about the legends of Venice as well as about the history of the city in relation to the stories.
A good book to take to the beach.

"Tell me what you eat," said that philosopher of the kitchen Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "and I will tell you what you are." What would he make of a nation which has the doughnut as one of the foods the world knows it by? What does it mean that doughnuts are defined as a particularly American food? Perhaps an anthropologist could tell us, and in the surprising and enlightening _Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut_ (University Press of Florida), anthropologist Paul R. Mullins has done so. Indeed, he has found those who say that a Krispy Kreme shop makes them proud to be Americans, and those who regard a shop as a shrine with pilgrims and converts. "It may seem absurd," Mullins writes, "that an apparently innocuous doughnut could be wrapped in the flag and lent an air of religiosity, but few dimensions of our world say as much about us as food." We do, however, have mixed feelings about our doughnuts. We may like them, but even those of us who like them know they are not really good for us, and there are those who hate them because they represent decadence or foolish food choices. Doughnuts, then, have a disputed symbolism, and their marketing and consumption can be mined, surprisingly, for various insights into American life.

The book reproduces a 1627 still life painting by Juan van der Hamen y Leon which shows pastries of the torus shape anyone would now recognize. This particular shape had one of its first mentions in print in 1877. That the toroidal shape certainly pre-dates cookbooks or oil paintings did not prevent an American from claiming invention of the doughnut hole. Captain Hanson Gregory, a cook at sea, found that the soggy and greasy doughnuts he was making resisted becoming more digestible by changing their ingredients, but once he lessened the lumps of dough by cutting a hole out, changing the shape made all the difference. He was nominated to the National Doughnut Hall of Fame for his contribution; the nomination read in part that he "not only discovered the hole in the first place, but invented the proper process for enclosing the hole in the doughnut." The Doughnut Corporation of America thus in the 1940s attempted to certify the appeal of assigning the origin of the hole in the doughnut to a New England seafarer. This is the same company that produced what Mullins says is "an ideologically distorted 1944 account" which claimed that the Pilgrims themselves brought their treasured doughnut recipe with them to the New World on the _Mayflower_.

In 2005, Florida governor Jeb Bush tried to strike a blow for Republicans within blue collar workers, when he wanted to know how many tax cuts Democrats had proposed for "Joe Bag of Donuts." In this, he was able to avoid reference to the drinking habits of Joe Six Pack, but Mullins shows that the consumption of doughnuts transcends economic class. However, the great spokesman for the doughnut is that industrial worker Homer Simpson, who gets four pages of coverage here in acknowledgment of his addiction. Mullins writes, "In _The Simpsons'_ hands, doughnuts are an especially powerful mechanism to examine the limits of desire, since doughnuts seem to have no significant redeeming feature besides the pleasure their ingestion produces." This "bad" characteristic has been the focus of the moralizing about doughnuts as early as 1846, and the importation of American doughnut franchises to other countries has been called "`calorie colonialism' planned by corporate America". The moral connection links cops to doughnuts, too; perhaps doughnut shops encourage being frequented by cops to keep robberies down, and perhaps, as one policeman argued, doughnut shops are easy places for cops to meet to discuss and solve crimes. Perhaps also they get free doughnuts (although any police force has rules against this), but there is no perhaps that doughnut shops remind citizens of the policeman's reputation for sloth and corruption. On a lighter note, wedding cakes are made from Krispy Kremes; one such record-breaker weighed over a ton, but many brides opt for a smaller version. In Portland, Oregon, Voodoo Doughnuts has doughnuts for weddings, and since the proprietors are ordained ministers, they offer weddings in the store. Mullins, as you can tell from this little summary, has pulled many facets of a humble luxury food together in a serious but entertaining study that answers in diverse ways the question, "What does the doughnut mean?"