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SAND DOLLAR BOOK SERIES
CELEBRATES TEN YEARS PUBLISHING CLASSICS
by Lisbeth Kent
GAINESVILLE, FLA--This fall University Press of Florida, the publisher of the State University System, celebrates the tenth anniversary of Florida Sand Dollar Books, a series that brings compelling and classic works of literature about the state back into print in affordable paperback editions.
Distinguished by the drawing of a sand dollar on the books' back covers, the series includes both fiction and nonfiction and includes 19 titles now in print.
The two newest releases showcase the series at its best:
Surrounded on Three Sides, a novel by John Keasler, is remarkable both for its humor and for its early portrayal of the dilemma of Florida growth. Upon publication 40 years ago, the Chicago Tribune called it "a jaunty, outstandingly human, and highly successful satire on the habits and ways of professional promoters, on ‘progress' in Florida . . . and a lot of other things."
Greeted with the same critical approval on its release in paperback this fall, The Tampa Tribune wrote that much of what Keasler found so troubling about Florida remains true today. The Miami Herald observed that "the book would be downright depressing if it weren’t so funny."
Keasler, who died in 1996, worked for 30 years at the old Miami News.
Sunshine States: Wild Times and Extraordinary Lives in the Land of Gators, Guns, and Grapefruit, by Patrick Carr, enjoyed similar praise when it was first published. The Toronto Globe and Mail called it "one of the best--and funniest--pieces of action journalism to come along since Tom Wolfe" and the Los Angeles Times declared that Carr "falls somewhere between Charles Dickens and Crocodile Dundee."
A transplant to Florida, Carr says he loves Florida for what it isn't--cold and old--and for what it is--hot and wild. His journalism appears in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Village Voice and other national magazines and newspapers.
Meredith Morris-Babb, the press's acquisitions editor-in-chief, recently announced the next two titles in the series, both now in production.
Going to Miami: Exiles, Tourists and Refugees in the New America, the first published book by David Reiff, will be available by the end of 1999. With a new preface by Reiff, the book offers first-hand impressions of Miami and tours the state of mind of the city's Hispanic community. Now a widely published journalist, Reiff is the author of many books including Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West.
Scheduled to release early in the year 2000, River of the Golden Ibis (first published in 1973) by Gloria Jahoda tells the story of the Hillsborough River’s course from the Everglades to Tampa and through time from prehistory to the present. Jahoda, who died in 1980, was a distinguished historian, folklorist, and naturalist observer, and was regarded as a poet of the people of North Florida.
With reinvigorated attention to the series, the press has appointed two contributing editors for fiction titles, Les Standiford, director of the creative writing program at Florida International University in Boca Raton and Diane Stevenson, a program director in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Standiford, author of the novel Presidential Deal, said recently that he sees the series as a way to highlight the fine writing that's been done in a culturally young state--a place where "citizens have become conditioned to feel that civilization arrived as part of a Disney World Main Street parade."
Stevenson said recently that the two contributing editors are looking especially for novels that convey the state's identity and sense of place and that they look forward to recommendations for the series from people who remember books set in Florida that have made a lasting impression on them.
In their coauthored foreword to Surrounded on Three Sides, they wrote that "this strain of Florida literature chronicles the struggle of a singularly beautiful landscape and environment to maintain and preserve itself--not against such natural destructive forces as the cycles of hurricane and drought, but against the unnatural erosion caused by human envy and greed."
Stevenson is the editor of one of University Press of Florida's featured titles this fall, Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen, a selection of more than 200 columns by the popular Miami novelist and journalist.
The first book in the Sand Dollar series, Palmetto Country by Stetson Kennedy, offers a rich anthology of history, statistics, myths, mores, folkways, and traditions, all tied together into a cultural time capsule -- what Kennedy himself called "a sort of barefoot social history of Florida." Based on work Kennedy did between 1937 and 1942 when he directed the folk life section of the Florida Writers’ Project, the book originally was published in 1942, when a New York Times review described it as "a fascinating account, gleaming with unknown and intriguing bits of information . . . a forceful argument animated by an alert and justice-loving mind."
All books are available at general interest book stores and from the press directly.
To read an excerpt from Surrounded on Three Sides, please click here!
For Review Copies, Please Write or Fax:
University Press of Florida, Publicity
15 NW 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
Fax: (352) 392-7302
MENTIONED IN THIS PRESS RELEASE
Surrounded on Three Sides, By John Keasler, $14.95
Sunshine States: Wild Times and Extraordinary Lives in the Land of Gators, guns, and Grapefruit, By Patrick Carr, $14.95
Going to Miami: Exiles, Tourists and Refugees in the New America, By David Reiff, $14.95
River of the Golden Ibis, By Gloria Jahoda, $19.95
Palmetto Country, by Stetson Kennedy, $19.95
