Kick Ass Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen
by Carl Hiaasen Readers who eagerly anticipate each new Carl Hiaasen novel will relish this selection of his Miami Herald columns, written with the same dark humor and satirical edge as Tourist Season, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, and the rest of Hiaasen’s brilliant and nationally acclaimed fiction. Known for evoking the disastrously flawed paradise of modern South Florida, Hiaasen proves in these columns that facts can indeed be stranger than the fiction they inspire. Beginning with "Welcome to South Florida," a chapter introducing such everyday events as animal sacrifice, riots at the beach, and a shootout over limes at the supermarket, this collection organizes over 200 columns into 18 chapters, chronicling the events and defining the issues that have kept the South Florida melting pot bubbling throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. An introductory essay provides an overview of Hiaasen’s career and outlines his principal concerns as a journalist.
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"For fans of the novels, it's a delight. . . , [b]ut the book is not just for Hiaasen's fans. Readers who have never cracked the covers of his novels can find much here to enjoy: Hiaasen cares deeply about Florida, cheers when something good happens, and gets riled when somebody does something dumb; readers interested in the Sunshine State will learn more from this book than from a stack of travel guides. Reminiscent of the snarky, opinionated newspaper articles of the great Mark Twain, Hiaasen's columns are finely crafted little gems."-- Booklist "Inside Florida, Hiaasen fans also have known him as a ferociously witty columnist for the
Miami Herald since the mid-eighties. The columns collected in Kick Ass cover that decade and a half, leaving a trail of blood from Hiaasen's barracuda-like attacks on the spoilers of South Florida. Though they are entertaining, urban dwellers everywhere should read them as more than entertainment; they probably foretell many of the painful issues that await other overcrowded areas of America. Miami, like Los Angeles, is one of the nation's polyglot signposts (dented by bullets) into the twenty-first century."--
The Nation "You just cover a lot of territory and you do it aggressively and you do it fairly and you don’t play favorites and you don’t take any prisoners. It’s the old school of slash-and-burn metropolitan column writing. You just kick ass. That’s what you do. And that’s what they pay you to do."--Carl Hiaasen
Titles of Related Interest: Sunshine States, Getting Naked with Harry Crews, Surrounded on Three Sides, Beach and Coastal Camping in
Florida, The Tropic of Cracker, Beyond the Theme Parks, Gladesmen, Some Kind of Paradise, |
Since its inception in 1985,
Hiaasen’s twice-weekly
"baseball-bat-to-the-forehead" column has
become enormously popular for its passionate conviction
and willingness to confront powerful interests in pursuit
of the public good. Amid the corruption and chaos of a
city on the edge, Hiaasen’s pointblank honesty and
clear articulation of what’s right have secured him
wide respect across the community’s many racial and
ethnic divides as well as the admiration of his peers,
who compare him to A. J. Leibling, I. F. Stone, and H. L.
Mencken. In addition to South Florida color and
world-class journalism, readers of Kick Ass will
find one of Florida’s staunchest defenders in
action, and they’ll take great pleasure in watching
him work.
