Florida Books

Excellent guide to the birding sites of Florida, especially to those birders chasing local "specialties".

We used this book as our itinerary planner for a recent 8 day trip to South Florida. We found the detailed directions to be so helpful to us in finding our target birds!

Birnbaum's Walt Disney World 1995 is the only guide for Disney World you will ever need! This book has a lot of valuable information that you won't want to miss if you ever go to Disney World! I haven't gone to Disney World in quite some time and I like to read it just for fun. I have aquired quite a lot of important information in this book. I've been to Disney World four times and I find that everything in this book is true and it is still helpful to me even after I have been there so many times. I hope you decide to buy this book because if you don't you're missing out on a great book and lots of valuable information!

This was the book we used on our first visit to Walt Disney World. I purchased it because I remember listening to innumerable travel reviews by the late Steve Birnbaum on the radio. He was a well-informed and thoroughly dedicated individual with a pleasant personality. We would never have gotten around Walt Disney World without this book. If you have never been to Walt Disney World I recommend that you really get a copy of this book or the most current version of it. If you really enjoy Walt Disney World like we did you may want to hold on to your copy of this book. It is just as much a souvenir as anything else you may purchase on your visit. This book holds fond and cherished memories for my family.

Mac Perry seems to catch the intensity of a new world as some of the first European explorers set foot on the North American continent. He has blended drama and well researched history to entertain and educate at the same time.I found this story intriguing and informative as to one of the important early contact episodes in Florida history.This volume is a great addition to any history buffs collection, and will also please anyone who likes a good story.

A true history novel with a smattering of sex, violence, and language for authenticity. The author begins with the fall of Granada and continues with a 600-man expedition departing Spain under ruthless Panfilo de Narvaez's command The adventure continues from the point of view of Estevanico, an African slave who is one of only four men to survive the trek. After a violent storm off the coast of Cuba, the ships land at Tampa Bay where the action begins. With four hundred men marching north toward today's Tallahassee, the ships return to sea never to be seen again. The foot soldiers encounter Indian attacks, starvation, disease and sleep deprivation. To compound things, Estevanico falls in love with an Indian maiden. The author writes several chapters from the Indain's point of view so we get to see how 16th century Indians lived. This is an exciting true story written in easy to read novel format and I recommend it to anyone interested in the Spanish conquest, prehistoric Indians of Florida history or archaeology.

"Blown Away" did not disappoint. My daughter read it she is 8 and then my son...who never reads (11 years old)!...read it and asked be today to see if Joan Harlow has authored other books. It is a wholesome often humors story that involves animals and everyday life. Highly recommended! Enjoy!!!

"Blown Away" is a welcome addition to the growing list of Harlow's amazing historical novels. The characters are well-drawn and unique, and the plot twists and turns with fascinating details of time and place until it inexorably plunges the young reader into the turbulent midst of one of the worst hurricanes ever to hit the U.S.A. No one can fail to identify with the characters as they face terror and death.There has been much in the news about recent storms such as Katrina. Experiencing this beautifully-written book will give young readers a more authentic feeling of what it is like to actually be caught up in the horror of such a storm. "Blown Away" is an exciting journey from beginning to end.

Of all books I have read about Brazil, this is certainly the one that presents the best analysis over the formation of the Brazilian people. By reading this book one will be able to understand how Brazil was created, how its own identity was forged and how this was linked to its economical cycles.
The Book also presents how the history of Brazil has been marked by the cruel elimination of indigenous people as well as the africans and dismisses the view of Brazil as a peacefull country without great civil wars in its history.

This book is really amazing because you'll find the historical formation of Brazil. Since colonial period till today.

The author will explain the formation of this great country and the complex formation of brazilian people. There's no how to understand Brazil without read this book before. This is one of the most complete book I've read abou this country

FROM BIRTH TO BOYHOOD TO MANHOOD , THE READER IS DRAWN UNWITTINGLY INTO YUSUF'S WORLD,LIKE AN ENDLESS FLOW OF THE RIVER OF LIFE, CONSISTING OF NEAR REAL CHARACTERS, HIS WORLD OF JOYS AND SORROWS, LOVE AND PASSION,WIT HUMOUR AND AGELESS WISDOM, HIS STRUGGLES TO PUT RIGHT THE WRONGS COMMITTED , INJUSTICES DONE. YUSUF IS FRANK ABOUT DESCRIBING HUMAN CRUELTY AT ITS WORST AND HUMAN PASSION AT ITS BEST - HIS FRUSTRATIONS AT HIS FAILURES AND HIS JOY IN HIS ACHIEVEMENTS AND HIS FINAL SENSE OF VICTORY IN THE BIRTH OF A NEW NATION-

Broken Milestones is an interesting and candid account of the journey from birth to manhood of the character Yusuf. The setting of the book is in the backdrop of two partitions - one of India and the other of the emergence of Bangladesh. Encapsulating the life of a civil servant in a society where once civil servants reigned supreme, it is a simply written account of a man and his varied experience in a particular historical setting. Like shadow-dancing, images are captured brilliantly in the book. The characters are colorful, yet believable and many resemble the contemporary figures of our history. The author has a flair for comic description. His style is cozy, yet he makes profound utterances with great ease. He has etched characters traversing from the comic to the poignant and his simply sketched scenes are engaging and full of intensity, not failing to do justice to the essence of the past. The book is definitely a page turner and never lets your interest flag, drawing you deeper into the book with the turn of every page. It is a book that must be read and absorbed and not flipped through. Qualitatively it is a welcome edition to an ever-increasingly rich array of South Asian books written in English.

This is a great book for all the people who love the rural wilderness in Florida. Very well researched enjoyable story with great descriptions of adventures in the Everglades over one hundred years ago but with a contemporary point of view of the heroine. Loved it.

The Bucket Flower gives the reader an opportunity to walk in the shoes of a botanist in old Florida in early 1900.

Set primarily in South Florida, the author takes the reader on an adventure from stuffy eastern society to the wilds of the everglades. Mr. Wilson follows the trail of a young female botanist who is trying to escape her overbearing father and a fiance she does not love.

As Beth pursues her dream of identifying the tropical plants of Florida, she runs into all kinds of wild creatures never before seen by this delicate "Bucket Flower" as she walks down a path of scientific and self discovery.

The descriptions are breathtaking and the story keeps you turning pages!!

Linda Bilodeau
Author: Stepping Through Seagrass
The Olive Branch A Tale of Resistance.

One day, my San Francisco 5th-grade class went to visit an exhibit about the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. While there, we met some survivors, old and ancient, but still alive with vivid memories of the disaster. To us, it had always been just something you read about. But, the survivors made the horror come alive, and suddenly we were quiet with awe and fright. This book gave me the same impression. Broken into a chronological pattern, we relive the days before, the days during, and the days after the conflagration. I couldn't put this book down! The book also told us something our beloved City always tried to hush up, and that was regarding the Bubonic Plague. The rats overran the City, due to broken sewer pipes and destruction, and with them they carried the fleas of the Plague. Astonishing. It can all happen again and reminds us how lucky Baghdad-By-The-Bay really was (only a few plague cases and no tsunami even though the Bay was lowered by four inches). You gotta get a hold of this book.

Gordon Thomas and Max Witts take the reader in detail, minute by minute into a living hell. They trace the damage done by the earthquake from its starting point out in the Pacific, ripping up onto the California coast and into the city by the bay. The earthquake broke the water and gas lines and because San Francisco was, and still is, built so close, a small fire spread. The military took over and some of the soldiers shot people without trial for looting and even not moving fast enough. And yet, the military looted items that they were suppose to guard, even the relief supplies. This book makes you feel like you are right in the middle of the action. The reader will feel like fighting the fire with the firemen, helping the common citizen trying to safe his home, or serching for a lost child for a frighten mother...not knowing if the child is dead or alive. One word comes to mind after reading this book...WOW!!!

Dr Ziegler is the best Professor at Western Washington University bar none. He made Political Science come alive in his class.. His book was also required reading and I can't think of one student who did not read it from cover to cover. After I graduated from Western, I gave the book to my dad to read because of Zieglers great insight. I took two classes from Dr Ziegler even though my major only required one.

Ziegler's book is a very readable, balanced overview of what most people see as the key question in national security -- how to prevent war. I have personally read 3 different editions of this book over the years, because I find it useful to think again about the issue. The primary approach of the book is two-fold. First there are some historical examples of times of crisis in war and peace. Then, using those examples (for which Ziegler can now have confidence in at least part of what the reader knows about them), a wide variety of appraoches to preventing war (military strength, arms control, diplomacy, world government, etc.) are considered in individual chapters. The conclusion I draw from reading this book is that there is no clear way to prevent war, but that there are lots of tools we can bring to bear in ensuring that, if war comes, it was not caused by regretable error (a la the Guns of August). As you can see, I recommend it as both a good read and a comprehensive (if introductory) discussion of the topic.

BY STREAMLINER FROM NEW YORK TO FLORIDA by Joseph Welsh must have been one of 2002's more popular rail-oriented books; a check of Amazon for "bestseller" potential in its field brings that truth closer to light. This is not a huge surprise because, in fact, BY STREAMLINERS appeals to at least six different groups of readers, for instance:
(1) railway history buffs, of course; for there is not only a lot of solid stuff here for specialists in railway history in general but also for students of
(2) these three dominant Florida rail lines in particular -- the Seaboard Air Line, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Florida East Coast -- all lumped in with rail megasystem CSX Transportation in the 1980s (only the "S" remains to remind us of the Seaboard); not to mention
(3) those fortunate folk who rode and remembered the experience of private-company rail travel from carriers that were constantly on their mettle to be the best in the lucrative snowbelt-to-Florida service; and
(4) younger folks like me for whom the pre-Amtrak era is entirely or mostly history; not to leave out
(5) lovers of 1950s style, documentation of serious design as well as the "populuxe" kitsch of contemporary art and dress (check out the cover of this book for a starter, of a Florida-bound SAL streamliner though northern snow and under the New York - to D.C. "catenary" electric wires); and last but not least
(6) folks who just love the romance of railroading in general.

BY STREAMLINER TO FLORIDA is a close-to-irreplaceable book, of an era and milueu as familiar to us as Aunt Blanche's trip to Fort Lauderdale and as romantic and compelling as a lost empire of different lines from different companies with different operating cultures, different styles of advertising and publicity, different on-board designs, even different menus. It's loaded with photographs of people and trains, rail employees and their locomotives, sleepers, diners and coaches; also observations and photo-reduced copies of originals -- many of which appear here in a non-specialty volume for the first time (what about those vintage menus with their vintage prices?).

None of this is coming back; the era between World War II demobilization and Amtrak's May 1, 1971 inauguration is a closed field. Even routine artifacts from these well-regarded companies who kept up "Santa Fe" standards of service, without (yet) attaining the mass consciousness that Super Chiefs and Navajo turquoise enjoy, are increasingly valued. SAL, ACL, and FEC passenger timetables from the Fifties and Sixties fetch $10-15 up from vendors and rail conventions, even a little roughed-up; clean dining- and bar-car menus are worth their weight in [not gold, but] literally in silver. Today, Amtrak still operates two of the Silver Series of streamliners (with newer equipment) up the Coast and back; but while Amtrak's systemwide standardization of day coaches and diners may be familiar, it cannot replace the uniqueness and vivacity, guts and gumption of the American private passenger rail experience at its finest, pre-1971.

BY STREAMLINER was published (in paperback) in 2002 by Motor Books International (MBI), who continue to publish heavily about American railroading but whose more recent entries have tended to be similarly "small art book" sized volumes (this go-round, hardbound) about individual railroad companies from both the pre- and post-megamerger waves of the 1980s and 1990s. While we're waiting for the publisher to wise up and reprint our book, used copies are available thru Amazon but the closest they are to new, the more they cost -- over $100 in some instances. Happily, you can snag a "good"-ranked used copy for a lot less.

BTW -- If, after this treat, you want to read a well written and fairly comprehensive history of American railroading 1970-2000, one place to start is MAIN LINES by Richard Saunders, Jr., available here (2008) in print.

Beautifully illustrated, lovingly detailed; Joe Welsh has done a fantastic job of documenting the history of passenger service to Florida via Seaboard Air Line, Atlantic Coast Line, and Florida East Coast, from the late 1800's up until Amtrak. A must-have book for anyone interested in those railroads, or in passenger trains. Loaded with great pictures of famous and not-so-famous trains, inside and out, as well as many actual train consists for given dates down through the years on particular routes. A wealth of information about just about every aspect of passenger service on these roads between Florida and the Northeast. A great read for any railfan.