Florida Man (and Woman) History, Part 5

     Here are some more quintessential Florida books, about the people and the land that make Florida Florida, a place with a population made up of people from every other state, and many other countries, but yet, Florida is unlike any other place.

    It seems that every journalist in Florida dreams of being a great novelist, and they often publish collections of columns and interviews about interesting people, places, and things with Florida connections, and there is no shortage of those. Al Burt and Jeff Klinkenberg are two of those authors. I discovered them through a favorite used book store nearby. They've both published several books about "Old Florida," the natural, primitive, challenging Florida that drew a particular, maybe peculiar, breed of tough, and tough-minded, individuals who made a life for their families. Maybe a life for the better, maybe not, but in any case a life that's remarkable and worth learning about. Each book is a collection of essays and columns, great for reading here and there, and each story gives the reader a different piece of the Florida puzzle, maybe creating a fuller, more accurate picture.  Whether you live in Florida, have family here, vacation here, or just want to learn about interesting people, I suggest that you give these authors a try.

    Rick Kilby is kind of an exception himself; he's not a former journalist. He actually studied and started his career in graphic design. He started blogging about Florida tourists sites, and he's gone on to write two very interesting books about Florida tourism history. Finding the Fountain of Youth is the story of water in the last 500 years of Florida's history. We all probably learned about Ponce de Leon, the famous Spanish conquistador who discovered and named Florida in his search for a "Fountain of Youth." Well, that whole story is a myth, largely made up by people who saw an opportunity in the late 1800s and early 1900s to draw lots of wide-eyed and innocent tourists with big purses to Florida. Ponce de Leon's search has been debunked by historians for decades; it just wasn't true. However, Kilby argues, Florida's waters have drawn people for centuries, and Florida is seen by many as sort of a Fountain of Youth.

    Florida's Healing Waters is a great book about the real healing waters of Florida, the springs and rivers of Florida that have drawn people for centuries, for sustenance, for relaxation, and even for medicinal qualities. The illustrations of "Floridania" --- Florida-centric memorabilia and advertising ephemera --- found in the two books make them super interesting alone, but the stories are worth reading too.

    

    At the Dawn of Tourism in Florida  is a thin volume published by the Florida Historical Society about the growth of the tourism industry in Florida after the Civil War. Everyone knows the name Harriet Beecher Stowe and her importance in the movement to abolish slavery, but you might not know that she was a Florida snowbird, living in Florida during winters following the Civil War. She wrote numerous stories and books about her happy life and the natural beauty of Florida. Other former abolitionists and other northerners read her work and started writing their own Florida travelogues. So, a large number of the early tourists who lived in Florida for months each year and who started building hotels and railroads which developed the state were formerly abolitionists. It's an interesting take on Florida history.