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Did you know the Florida Historical Society
publishes books? |
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Chasing Bones
In January 2001, Rachel Wentz walked away from a career as a firefighter/paramedic in Orlando to pursue a PhD in anthropology, specializing in the analysis of human remains. Her studies at Florida State University focused on ancient skeletons from the Windover site, but took her into the darker world of forensics and beyond. Travel with Dr. Wentz to the famed museums of London, Paris, and Italy, the fragrant landscapes of Ukraine, the beautiful shores of the Caribbean, and back to Florida. This engaging and fast-paced memoir provides the reader a first-hand glimpse into the fascinating world of bioarchaeology, where skeletons hold the clues to past lives and the ancient civilizations from which they came. |
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The Florida Slave
"In the writings of Stetson Kennedy, education and social action are constantly joined. Generations of human rights advocates have used Stetson's investigative reporting and research to improve the conditions of agricultural workers, women, Latinos, and many others. Stetson Kennedy's pursuit of honesty, social equality, and freedom was unparalleled. He told the stories of America's forgotten people." |
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Florida's Freedom Struggle
Dr. Winsboro's latest effort brings into focus one of the most disturbing yet vital issues in Florida history. To get an idea of the breadth and dimension of the race problem in Florida's complex and long history, one needs only to read this collection of important essays and accompanying analysis by Dr. Winsboro. From this collection, the reader will find an amazing transformation in attitudes and academic research of this issue. For this wide and fresh perspective, we must give a hearty thanks to Dr. Winsboro and the Florida Historical Society Press. |
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Hollow Victory: A Novel of the Second Seminole War
The year is 1835 and the Florida Territory is on the verge of a major war. President Andrew Jackson has ordered the Seminole Indians to abandon their homes and move to a reservation west of the Mississippi. Called into action is Col. William Wooster, a career officer who understands that removing the Seminoles will be a long and arduous task. Standing against the colonel is Kachi-Hadjo, a determined Seminole leader who wages a desperate seven-year conflict to remain on his native soil and protect his people’s way of life. Both men fight the merciless climate, growing frustrations, and each other, both hoping the next battle will yield something more than a hollow victory. |
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Conservation In Florida: Its History and Heroes
Gary White has provided us with a fascinating general history of Florida's environmental movement from Bartram to Nat Reed.
Part environmental, and part conservation history, this book is both interesting and informative.
White lends a journalistic flair to his subject and the reader will be rewarded with a brisk, entertaining, and well-written history.
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The Trouble With Panthers
“The trouble with panthers is they can’t change. With the whole world changin round it, old panther got no choice but to go on bein a panther. It can’t reason like you and me -- can’t decide to earn its livin a little differently.” Central Florida, November 2004. Upon hearing this admonition from his dying grandfather, young cowman, Bodie Rawlerson, doesn’t hesitate to promise the old man that he won’t be like the panther. Though he hates change, fears it more than anything else, he vows to do whatever necessary to carry on the family legacy of raising cattle on the land he so dearly loves. But unbeknownst to Bodie, forces are already in motion to render his promise impossible to keep. Within days of his grandfather’s passing, these forces of human (and inhuman) nature will convince him that nothing lasts forever, that change is life’s only certainty -- that time and chance do indeed rule us all. |
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Florida's
Frontier - The Way Hit Wuz "The Way Hit Wuz" is a novel about Florida's history similiar to Patrick Smith's book "A Land Remembered". Recently reprinted 2010 with new cover. |
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The Sketchbook of Philip Ayer Sawyer This is intended to be a faithful reproduction of the original, with background information added as a Introduction and to accompany some of the sketches. Sawyer's expectation was that his drawings should eventually illustrate a manuscript which would describe the maritime history of Florida. In a small way it is hoped this book, in his memory and seventy-five years later, may that purpose. |
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Palmetto Country Stetson Kennedy collected folklore and oral histories throughout Florida for the WPA between 1937 and 1942. The result was this classic Florida book, back in print for the first time in more than twenty years with an Afterword update and dozens of historic photographs never before published with this work. Alan Lomax said, "I doubt very much that a better book about Florida folklife will ever be written." “I don't know of any book on my whole shelf that hits me any harder than Palmetto Country. It gives me a better trip and taste and look and feel for Florida than I got in the forty-seven states I've actually been in body and tramped in boot. If only, and if only, all our library books could say what [Kennedy does]—the jokes and songs and old ballads about voodoo and the hoodoo and the bigly winds down in your neck of the woodvine.” Woody Guthrie Folk Musician and singer-songwriter, This Land is Your Land |
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Deluna, Founder of North America's First Colony An historical novel. "Pensacola author John Appleyard based this dramatic historical novel upon the letters, journals, and other accounts of the effort to establish a Spanish colony at Ochuse, La Florida in 1559-61. This expedition to present-day Pensacola was the first attempted European settlement in North America." |
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A Trip To Florida For Health and Sport More than eighty years before Majorie Kinman Rawlings published The Yearling, Cyrus Parkhurst Condit wrote this coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy in Florida who learns to hunt, builds a fence, and takes a fawn as a pet. Undiscovered and unpublished until now, this engating story is historically significant as one of the first Florida novels ever written. Fascinating historical and literary context is provided by the editors. |
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Guns Across The Loxahatchee In this book the author recounts the story of the 42-year struggle (1817-1858) for control of Florida between the U.S. armed forces (both regulars and volunteers) and Red and Black Seminole warriors. Of the three wars fought during this conflict the longest and bloodiest was the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), in which a crucial series of pitched battles culminated in the Battle of Loxahatchee, January 24, 1838 |
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Saving Home |
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Overhead The Sun Overhead The Sun, a gripping historical novel about race relations in Florida during the late Nineteenth Century. Written by the late John Ashworth, Overhead The Sun is based on the tragic story of Rosewood, a small Florida community of African-Americans that was destroyed by a mob of whites in 1923. The central character in Overhead The Sun is Julia Clayton, a young woman striving mightily to achieve emotional and intellectual independence. Her husband, Tom Clayton, works for Arthur Wilkins (who is based on the real life person of Henry Flagler) who seeks to extend his hotel and railroad empire across the Sunshine State. Neglected and verbally abused, Julia Clayton takes a heretical economics professor, Thorstein Brach, as her lover. The intrigues and conflicts of personality that mark these tortured relationships light up the pages of Overhead The Sun. |
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Florida's Civil War: Explorations into Conflict, Interpretations and Memory Welcome to Florida Historical Society Press’ initial volume in its newly created Gold Seal series. This is the first of what will eventually be a multi-volume series of specialized books that deal with narrowly focused issues in Florida history. |
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River Road Stories
River Road Stories is a little masterpiece of story telling. Mary Eschbach, a Rockledge resident, captures life along the Indian River as only a resident can. What a wonderful way to celebrate a way of life that has passed us all by! Patrick Smith, author of A Land Remembered There are some authors and some books that you start to read with interest and finish with envy. River Road Stories is such a book. Packed in a few pages, Stories manages to describe in great detail the daily humdrum and occasional excitement of a young girl's life along the Indian River Lagoon. At the same time, River Road Stories is a song of praise for a lifestyle that is largely gone, but which exists forever in the mind of the author. Once you read River Road Stories, you'll become part of the past. Nick Wynne, PhD, The Florida Historical Society |
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Florida's Big Dig: The Atlantic Intracoastal WaterwayThis book is the story of people of vision and courage, of a small group of prominent Saint Augustine investors who conceived of the Florida waterway and began the first dredging work; of an obscure group of New England capitalists who provided significant financing and obtained a million acres of undeveloped Florida public land in pursuing what was, at best, a speculative enterprise; of innumerable citizen groups like the Florida east coast chamber associations and the larger Atlantic Deeper Waterways Association that demanded at the turn of the last century what they believed was the peoples right-a public waterway, free of the burden of tolls; and finally, of the U>S> Army Corps of Engineers, who conducted all of the Florida waterway's early surveys and assumed the project's control in 1929 to convert what was once a private toll way into Florida's modern-day, toll-free Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. |
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Then Sings My Soul: The Scott Kelly Story 2008 CHARLTON TEBEAU BOOK AWARD WINNER “In this exciting
book—part political history, part travelogue—Dorothy Smiljanich
sheds light on 1960s Florida with her vivid portrayal of one of
Florida’s most colorful political figures, Scott Kelly. Mayor of
Lakeland at 28 and legislative power broker in his 30s, Kelly strode
a wide path in the swirling political cauldron of 1960s Florida.
Kelly twice came within an eyelash of being governor. This vivid
portrayal of Kelly’s life begins in the Old Florida of tobacco and
turpentine, and concludes with the New Florida of huge housing
developments and super expressways, a Florida Kelly helped create.”
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High Above the Hippodrome Rudy longs to be an aerialist, but Shorty wants him to follow in his own clown footsteps. When Rudy learns the truth behind his objections, he has hard choices to make. Will he follow his father's path, or will he risk his anger and its repercussions to make his dream a reality? Fans of the award-winning novels, Tasso of Tarpon Springs and Panther Girl welcome High Above The Hippodrome, a captivating behind-the-scenes story of circus life on the road with The Ringling and Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1927. |
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Finest Kind: A Celebration of a Florida Fishing Village
The story of a real Florida fishing village. |
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Pioneer Commercial Photography The Burgert Brothers, Tampa Florida
The firm of S. P. Burgert and Son was one of the most prolific photographers of the period and their images recorded the evolution of Tampa Bay from a small village on Florida's west coast to a dynamic city that epitomized the tremendous growth that marked Twentieth Century Florida. From it founding in 1899 until the mid-1950s, the Burgerts took thousands of images of the best and worst of the city. |
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Florida Tales: Historical Advantures for Young Floridians
The short stories of Carolyn Teicher Potts. |
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The Volusian: Horatio S. Dexter
The activities of Horatio S. Dexter as a frontier diplomat plant, and Indian trader are well-documented in the historical archives. However, a study of his life through these various documents reveals a contrast of opinion as to his motives, his business acumen and his sensitivity to the Indians of Florida. |
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Phillip's Great Adventures: Spies, Root Beer and Alligators
Adam was on his bike headed toward the beach in Boca Raton, Florida to look for treasures washed up by the waves. Instead he bumped into Phillip, a man who enchanted him with tales of adventures growing up on the same beach during World War II. Adam found his treasure it was Phillip's friendship and amazing hair-raising adventures of life in the small town of Boca Raton during the war years. |
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Faces On The Frontier: Florida Surveyors and Developers in
the 19th Century
Joe Knetsch has successfully captured the problems and triumphs of early surveyors in Florida as they battled hostile Native Americans, disease, weather and political pressures to "lay out" the Florida Peninsula for settlement. Without these intrepid pioneers of the 19th Century, the Sunshine State would still be a daunting wilderness of swamps and jungles. |
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The St. Johns
From The Marshlands To The Atlantic
The authors are not historians or experts of any kind but they have traversed the waters of the river by air boat from the flood-plain and marshes southwest of Fellsmere which mark its beginning, and later by larger vessel to the point where its waters join one of the great oceans of the world. We have endeaved to show the river as we saw it and to provide accurate descriptions and information. |
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Weird Florida II; In A State of Shock
Cows in the Intracoastal Waterway? A bloodsucking night creature on the loose in Miami? The Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich? Nationally known talk show host high on drugs? The mayor of one small town who banned Satan? The mayor of another small town who campaigned on a platform of "hot loins?" Yep! All this and more too! It's all in Eliot Kleinberg's Weird Florida II; In A State of Shock. |
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Crossing
Divison Street - An Oral History of the African-American Community in Orlando
This book includes an overview of the people, institutions, and events that shaped the establishment, growth and history of the African-American community in Orlando. We examine the creation of the neighborhood's educational centers, places of worship, and businesses, and the irony of how desegregation inadvertently led to the decline of the community. Significant instances of racial unrest in Orlando that are often overlooked are detailed in this manuscript. |
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A Bosnian
Diary - A Floridian's Experience In Nation Building
William Potter served as an International election supervisor in Bosnia-Herzegovina and as the Air Force legel advisor to the Office of the High Representative and government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition, he served as the Head of the Rule of Law Department in the administration of the High Representative Paddy Ashdown. |
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A Historic Sampler
of Tallahassee and Leon County This book provides a look into the history of Leon County and its biggest city. |
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Southern
Cooking A Man's Domain Although he provides some great recipes in this book, he admonishes all cooks to use them as basic guide-lines and adapt them to taste. |
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Confessions
of a Night Librarian and Other Embarrassments
Ron McFarland's recollections of growing up in Brevard County in the 1950's and early 1960's provide excellent fodder for his wicked sense of humor and his somewhat warped "take on life." |
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War in
Paradise Re-print, Stories of World War II in Florida by Eliot Kleinburg. |
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Memoir on the
Geography, and Natural and Civil History of Florida A book by William Darby. |
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Guardian
Angel 911 Not unlike all our lives this book is a series of stories, separate but interconnected. They are all true with the exception of some literary license where details were lost in the telling and retelling. Guardian Angel 911 will provide an insight to the sojourn of a native, born in the isolated hammocks and swamps of the real Florida, before the population exploded in the third quarter of the twentieth century. - J.T. Glisson |
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Florida
Historical Society 1856-2004 A history of the Florida History Society by Dr. Jerrell Shofner. |
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The Life and
Legacy of Mary McLeod Bethune
"This book is easy and interesting reading. It presents the “Life and Legacy” of the late Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune holistically and concludes with testimonies from living witnesses. The author narrates Dr. Bethune’s early years and documents how developments in those years influenced her later accomplishments. Permeating Dr. Bethune’s spectacular career is a philosophy based on deep religious convictions and held that “work was honorable, no matter how menial the task." |
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Jacob
Summerlin: King of the Crackers In this biography, Drs. Joe and Mark Akerman manage to capture the essence of Jake Summerlin's life and the broader scope of Florida history. |
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Canaveral
Light Canaveral Light is an explosive novel about the struggle of early Florida pioneers to live in harmony with the land and its native people. Winner of the Patrick Smith book award from the Florida Historical Society. |
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Florida at War
This book is a collection of essays on different aspects of Florida's important role in WWII. |
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Brevard
County History to 1955 Brevard County History to 1955 by John M. Eriksen. |
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Joseph Mills
White Anti-Jacksonian Floridian Joseph Mills White, Anti-Jacksonian Floridian by Ernest Dibble. |
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Henry Plant -
Pioneer Empire Builder “This is a must read for every railroad buff. It adds to the literature on Henry Bradley Plant and the machinations of late 19th century transportation barons. Plant led an interesting life—as a Confederate and a Yankee—juggling the demands for business success with an ever-changing political milieu. Plant’s achievements rivaled those of Henry Flagler in making modern Florida.” - Nick Wynne, The Florida Historical Society |
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Florida
Decades, A Sesquicentennial History 1845-1995 Florida Decades by James J. Horgan & Lewis N. Wynne. |
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Ciudad De
Cigars: West Tampa Ciudad De Cigars: West Tampa by Armando Mendez. "Ciudad De Cigars" is out of print. |
