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Discover Florida Stories

 

Summer Reading
for Florida nature enthusiasts
from the University Press of Florida

 

 

Enjoy Florida’s Best Nature Writing


River of the Golden Ibis
(2000)

by Gloria Jahoda

"A beautifully written informal account of the Tampa Bay region."—Library Journal

"A colorful history of Tampa Bay, the Hillsborough River which flows into it, and the cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg, together with their smaller satellite communities."— Publishers Weekly


432pp. 6 X 9.
30 b&w drawings.

ISBN 0-8130-1789-0 Paper, $19.95
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Contemplations of a Primal Mind (2000)

by Gabriel Horn

"Horn's moving essays afford a window on the way Native American spirituality looks as it is lived. A generous, searching writer, Horn never descends to polemic to make his nonetheless sharp points about the submersion of native or 'primal' values in ones called civilized. . . . Horn poignantly shows . . . how difficult but rewarding it is to live, moment by shining moment, in a primal relationship to the world."--Booklist

170pp. 5 ˝ X 8 ˝.


ISBN 0-8130-1754-8  Paper, $19.95
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The Wild Heart of Florida: Florida Writers on Florida’s Wildlands (1999)

Edited by Jeff Ripple and Susan Cerulean

Foreword by Debbie Drake

Wild Heart of Florida - jacket coverEighteen of Florida’s best-loved writers here share their affection for Florida’s wild side—the beautiful heart of a state under siege from development. Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White, Al Burt, Patrick Smith, the late Archie Carr, and others evoke a Florida thick with pinewoods, alligators, and palmetto scrub; ribboned by miles of coast and dune; blessed with backcountry lakes, rivers, creeks, and springs. Strip malls and concrete cannot tame this wild Florida, but they can kill it. These essays offer passionate argument why that cannot be allowed to happen.

224 pp.

ISBN 0-8130-1653-3 Cloth, $34.95  
ISBN 0-8130-1656-8 Paper, $19.95
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Gladesmen: Gator Hunters, Moonshiners, and Skiffers
(1998)

by Glen Simmons and Laura Ogden

Foreword by Gary Mormino and Raymond Arsenault, Series Editors

Gladesmen - jacket cover"Glen Simmons is South Florida’s Davy Crockett: king of its wild frontier, the Everglades. . . .While Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ famous 1947 prose poem, The Everglades: River of Grass, soars aloof above the ‘vast, glittering wilderness,’ Simmons thrusts you into the razory sawgrass where you can feel the swarming mosquitoes landing on your face. . . . The book is an homage to the rugged ‘swamp rats’ who were largely overlooked or scorned by the region’s historians, naturalists, and adventurers."—Miami Herald

The Florida History and Culture Series

256 pp. 6 X 9. 54 b&w photos, map.

ISBN 0-8130-1573-1 Cloth, $24.95
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Palmetto Leaves
(1999)

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Introduction by Mary B. Graff and Edith Cowles

Palmetto Leaves by Harriet Beecher StoweIn 1867, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin settled in a small cottage in Mandarin, Florida, overlooking the St. Johns River. She had promised her Boston publisher another novel but was so taken with northeast Florida that she produced instead a series of sketches of the land and the people which she submitted in 1872 under the title Palmetto Leaves.

Stowe describes life in Florida in the latter half of the 19th century—"a tumble-down, wild, panicky kind of life—this general happy-go-luckiness which Florida inculcates." Her idyllic sketches of picnicking, sailing, and river touring expeditions and simple stories of events and people in this tropical "winter summer" land became the first unsolicited promotional writing to interest northern tourists in Florida.

A Florida Sand Dollar Book

352 pp. 15 illustrations, map, index

ISBN 0-8130-1693-2 Paper, $12.95
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"A River in Flood" and Other Florida Stories by Marjory Stoneman Douglas
(1998)

Edited by Kevin M. McCarthy

Illustrations by Larry Leshan

A River in Flood - jacket cover"All these tales have things to say about who we are and why we choose to live here. At her best, Douglas is a ripsnorting yarn-spinner. . . . What these stories best bring out for today’s readers is a dear, sweet nostalgia for a South Florida which, like Douglas herself, is now lost to all of us." Miami Herald

 

 

 

1999 Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Book Award


A Florida Sand Dollar Book

176 pp. 9 illustrations.

ISBN 0-8130-1622-3 Cloth, $39.95
ISBN 0-8130-1623-1 Paper,
$17.95
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Nine Florida Stories by Marjory Stoneman Douglas
(1990)

Marjory Stoneman Douglas - Everglades Crusader and WriterEdited by Kevin M. McCarthy

"Written as entertainment for a mass market . . . crammed with colorful characters, vivid incidents and palpable atmosphere. . . . A reminder of a Florida gone by or fast disappearing."—Orlando Sentinel

"Reflects the same concerns found in her better-known non-fiction work—a fascination with the beauty of Florida and a warning against its imminent destruction."—Tallahassee Democrat

198 pp.

ISBN 0-8130-0988-X Cloth, $22.95
ISBN 0-8130-0994-4 Paper, $17.95
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