Oh, Florida!
How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country
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ISBN10: 1250143640
ISBN13: 9781250143648
Trade Paperback
352 Pages
$20.00
CA$27.00
Winner of the 2016 Florida Book Awards Gold Medal in Nonfiction
To outsiders, Florida seems baffling. It’s a state where the voters went for Barack Obama twice, yet elected a Tea Party candidate as governor. Florida is touted as a carefree paradise, yet it’s also known for its perils—alligators, sinkholes, pythons, hurricanes, and sharks, to name a few. It attracts 90 million visitors a year, some drawn by its impressive natural beauty, others bewitched by its manmade fantasies.
Oh, Florida! explores those contradictions and shows how they fit together to make Florida the most interesting state. It is the first book to explore the reasons why Florida is so wild and weird—and why that’s okay. Florida couldn’t be Florida without that sense of the unpredictable, unexpected, and unusual lurking behind every palm tree. But there is far more to Florida than its sideshow freakiness. Oh, Florida! explains how Florida secretly, subtly influences all of the other states in the country, both for good and for ill.
Reviews
Praise for Oh, Florida!
"Painstakingly reported and researched . . . compulsively readable. As much as his book is a celebration of Florida, it is also a celebration of journalism."—The New York Times
"An extraordinary catalog of 'weird Florida' . . . the definitive guide. [T]his fast-roving narrative has a rollicking pace that readers will enjoy."—Los Angeles Times
"Craig Pittman delivers a convincing case that Florida’s reputation for off-the-chain zaniness is not only historically accurate but an evolving carnival of delight. Pittman has deep roots in the state, and his joyous deconstruction is offered with the humor, zest and storytelling skill of a roomful of uncles telling tall tales at a family funeral. The stories [are] packed with all manner of hilarious factoids and unlikely anecdotes."—The Washington Post
"At points, the book is funny, thought-provoking, and infuriating, sometimes all at once, and it’s a credit to Pittman and his encyclopedic knowledge of the state and its history that readers accept the shockingly disturbing and frustrating alongside the shockingly silly."—San Francisco Book Review