Florida State Books

While I've always been a fan of Sehlinger's Unofficial Guide, I thought this Spring update was excellent, and extremely up-to-date. While the other WDW guidebooks were still listing attractions like Mr. Toad, closed since 9/98, Fodor's actually reviewed its Pooh replacement. If you want the most current WDW info, along with touring guides, interesting trivia, and reviews of Universal and other Orlando-area attractions, this is the one to buy.

War Dance At Fort Marion: Plains Indian War Prisoners is the true story of Kiowa, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho chiefs and warriors who were held as prisoners of war by the U.S. Army from 1875 to 1878 at Fort Marion in Saint Augustine, Florida. The prisoners participated in an educational experiment, as introduced by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, as an alternative to standard imprisonment. While they were incarcerated, the Indian leaders followed Pratt's rules and met his educational demands, while keeping hold of their own identities. Author and history professor Brad. D. Lookingbill draws from primary sources, particularly Native American accounts, to piece together the story of the war prisoners, as well as portray Pratt's evolving vision to mold Indians into model citizens of American mainstream society - an undertaking that came at a cost of personal suffering and cultural loss for the Indian generations so molded. Of particular note are the coping strategies that Plains Indian leaders used to survive their internment with dignity and return to lead their people with pride. Highly recommended.

Alderson has helped bring to light a little known and critical natural area and along the way has discovered people and places that illuminate Florida's history and culture beyond the oft-visited tourist centers. Alderson shows you the real Florida and helps you experience the pull of the tides, the roll of manatees moving over the seagrasses, and foraging birds in a lingering subtropical sunset - as well as clouds of mosquitoes in your tent! A very rewarding adventure and satisfying read.

Welfare and Charity in the Antebellum South is a scholarly examination of public welfare efforts in the American South prior to the Civil War, and a much-needed counterbalance to studies of such issues during the period that tend to focus upon the urban centers of the North. In the nineteenth century, private acts of charity were almost exclusively meted out to whites, ranging from the founding of state-supported schools, orphanages, and health care to food relief efforts. Because of these charitable works, the poor whites of the south had less resentment of the rich, and as a group they were more willing to risk their lives in military service along with the rich slaveholders as the Civil War threatened. Welfare and Charity in the Antebellum South includes careful comparisons between the upper and lower South, between urban and rural areas, and between welfare efforts in the South and the North, as well as correcting the myth that Northern charity was more widespread. A welcome addition to American History shelves and reference collections, especially recommended for college libraries.

"Whatever My Father Wants..." was a touching tale of love and tragedy. The story is enthralling and the author makes it very easy for you to feel you are in her shoes. I read through this book in no time, I didn't want to put it down. I would highly recommend it. Gayle Lerman-DeCoste is a very talented writer and I look forward to reading more of her books.

A collaborative effort by Michelle Stigleman and Deborah Van Brunt, Wheelchairs On The Go: Accessible Fun In Florida is a straightforward and very "user friendly" guide to Florida's handicapped-friendly tourist resorts, theme parks, beaches, lodging, fishing, camping, and much, much more. Individual chapters identify the best every regional section of Florida and what it has to offer for the wheelchair-bound vacationer looking for fun and relaxation. Proffering a superbly organized wealth of facts, addresses, phone numbers, and everything else a vacationer needs to know, Wheelchairs On The Go is an excellent resource and would serve as a superb template for developing similar travel guides for other states.

This is a very good resource for helping to understand the estate administration process in Florida. Although Florida requires the hiring of an attorney to administer all but small estates, being knowledgeable in the process can make a difficult process go much smoother. This book also advises those not directly involved in the administration process, which is particularly useful as those persons may not have the direct advice of an attorney. This is a book that should be read by every single Floridian. Although the subject matter is not fun, it will effect every Floridian at least once in their lives and ignorance in this area can lead to some very costly lessons for both yourself and your loved ones.

You should be aware that since this book's publication, Florida has made some significant changes to its probate code. However, these changes do not affect the majority of this book.

Cheryl Benard, from the Rand Corporation, said that this work is elegantly written and intelligently argued, this is an exceptional book in which the title, for once, does not promise too much. Barazangi, a research fellow at Cornell University, is a scholar to watch with a mind to admire. In a field littered with the strident, the clumsy, the redundant, the intellectually dishonest, and the overtly partisan, she skirts all those traps with grace and shows a way to move forward the grid-locked discussion over core Islamic values--especially but not only those concerning women.

She asks two basic questions at the heart of her endeavor: "Who has the authority to read and interpret the Qur'anic text, and how is it to be done?"

This is a bold book, though its most revolutionary positions are argued with such persuasive subtlety and such a lack of confrontational zeal that their impact is not immediately evident. For example, using instances from the Prophet's personal life, Barazangi persuasively argues the fallibility of Muhammad and the necessity of separating his divine prophecy from his error-prone and flawed human self. (A fact he himself constantly reiterated during his lifetime, though to little avail in the face of loyal followers who were determined to venerate him blindly.) She demonstrates the ways in which the original Islamic community violated its own principles--anathema to Islamists to whom that community represents a perfect ideal.

Powerfully, Barazangi shows that Muslim women from the first moment forward were obliged--in clear violation of the Qur'anic message--to accept the authority, not of the text or its contained divine word, but of male interlocutors. "It was assumed that she could follow the interpretations of her male members of the household and other male elites, and continue with her task without seeing the light of the Qur'an in her own consciousness, or the light of the world with her own eyes." For the latter, hijab serves as an expressive metaphor on several levels. It represents the separation of women from the "light of the world" and the external definition of the individual woman's moral conduct. There is probably no more incendiary revolutionary sentence than her conclusion, that "autonomous morality cancels the assumption of the proxy morality of women." Unfortunately, in this book at least, Barazangi refrains from the logical next step, namely of arguing for the autonomous morality of the Muslim believer in general, vis-à-vis his patriarchal elders, his tribe, his local traditions, etc.

The strength of Barazangi's impressive work is also its most regrettable aspect: it is a sophisticated argument written in academic English and published by a university press. Her authoritative and solidly grounded case needs to be heard by the broader young Muslim public in the region, not by readers like me.

Junior League cookbooks are the best! This one has so many great and EASY recipes. My copy is covered in splattered ingredients because I use it all the time. My friends always rave about the "gourmet" food from this book -- I hate to tell them how easy it all is to make!

Florida may now seem to be the land of beaches, theme parks and sprawling planned unit developments, but it wasn't always this way. In, "Would Do, Could Do and Made Do", Nancy Dale takes you on a trip into Florida's not too distant past and into the lives of Florida's pioneer, "Cow Hunters" (cowboys). Before air conditioning, doppler radar and the interstate, there were enterprising families carving out an existence in the untamed tropical wilds of Florida. Nancy Dale brings it all to life in a way that is part news report and part conversational recounting as told through interviews with those that lived the experience. Photos throughout the work put faces to the names, and the well worn features of many tell their own tales of lives well lived and well worked.

Having lived in Florida for twenty years (a new kid compared to these folks), I have crisscrossed the state several times. If you travel only the coastlines you might never know that at its heart Florida is an agricultural power house. We're not just talking oranges here. Sprawling cattle ranches line the roads that travel east and west through the state. Yet still, each time I travel those roads I see change. I see growth and encroachment. Nothing stays the same, but in "Would Do, Could Do and Made Do" we are given some bit of hope that if there is one thing that might be able to outlast the sprawl, it is the will of these early Florida pioneers, these Cow Hunters.