Books published by University Press of Florida

For 500 years, visitors to Florida have discovered magic. In Some Kind of Paradise, an eloquent social and environmental history of the state, Mark Derr describes how this exotic land is fast becoming a victim of its own allure. Written with both tenderness and alarm, Derr's book presents competing views of Florida: a paradise to be protected and nurtured or a frontier to be exploited and conquered.

Florida Historical Society Stetson Kennedy AwardFlorida Book Awards, Bronze Medal for Florida NonfictionAmerica's wettest state is running out of water. Florida-with its swamps, lakes, extensive coastlines, and legions of life-giving springs-faces a drinking water crisis. Drying Up is a wake-up call and a hard look at what the future holds for those who call Florida home. Journalist and educator John Dunn untangles the many causes of the state's freshwater problems. Drainage projects, construction, and urbanization, especially in the fragile wetlands of South Florida, have changed and shrunk natural water systems. Pollution, failing infrastructure, increasing outbreaks of toxic algae blooms, and pharmaceutical contamination are worsening water quality. Climate change, sea level rise, and groundwater pumping are spoiling freshwater resources with saltwater intrusion. Because of shortages, fights have broken out over rights to the Apalachicola River, Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades, and other important watersheds. Many scientists think Florida has already passed the tipping point, Dunn warns. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and years of research, he affirms that soon there will not be enough water to meet demand if "e;business as usual"e; prevails. He investigates previous and current restoration efforts as well as proposed future solutions, including the "e;soft path for water"e; approach that uses green infrastructure to mimic natural hydrology. As millions of new residents are expected to arrive in Florida in the coming decades, this book is a timely introduction to a problem that will escalate dramatically-and not just in Florida. Dunn cautions that freshwater scarcity is a worldwide trend that can only be tackled effectively with cooperation and single-minded focus by all stakeholders involved-local and federal government, private enterprise, and citizens. He challenges readers to rethink their relationship with water and adopt a new philosophy that compels them to protect the planet's most precious resource.

The first-ever bilingual anthology by the Afro-Cuban poet Excilia Saldana contains a wide-ranging selection of her work, from lullabies to an erotic letter, from lengthy autobiographical poems to quiet reflections on her Caribbean island as the inspiration for her writing.

Explores the conditions, forces, and processes behind Florida's surprisingly varied and dynamic weather. Discussing Florida's latitude, longitude, area, landscape, and population, as well as the position of the sun and the importance of evaporation and condensation, the authors break down the features that shape Florida's remarkable weather.

Puerto Rico's colonial relationship with the United States and its history of intermixture of native, African, and Spanish inhabitants has prompted inconsistent narratives about race and power in the colonial territory. Departing from these accounts, early twentieth-century writers, journalists, and activists scrutinized both Puerto Rico's and the United States's institutionalized racism and colonialism in an attempt to spur reform, leaving an archive of oft-overlooked political writings.In Seams of Empire, Carlos Alamo-Pastrana uses racial imbrication as a framework for reading this archive of little-known Puerto Rican, African American, and white American radicals and progressives, both on the island and the continental United States. By addressing the concealed power relations responsible for national, gendered, and class differences, this method of textual analysis reveals key symbolic and material connections between marginalized groups in both national spaces and traces the complexity of race, racism, and conflict on the edges of empire.

';Maher explores the development of the Frontier Complex as he deconstructs the frontier myth in the context of manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, and white male privilege. A very significant contribution to our understanding of how and why heritage sites reinforce privilege.' Frederick H. Smith, author of The Archaeology of Alcohol and Drinking ';Peels back the layer of dime westerns and True Grit films to show how their mythologies are made material. You'll never experience a ';heritage site' the same way again.'Christine Bold, author of The Frontier Club: Popular Westerns and Cultural Power, 18801924 The history of the Wild West has long been fictionalized in novels, films, and television shows. Catering to these popular representations, towns across America have created tourist sites connecting such tales with historical monuments. Yet these attractions stray from known histories in favor of the embellished past visitors expect to see and serve to craft a cultural memory that reinforces contemporary ideologies. In Mythic Frontiers, Daniel Maher illustrates how aggrandized versions of the past, especially those of the ';American frontier,' have been used to turn a profit. These imagined historical sites have effectively silenced the violent, oppressive, colonizing forces of manifest destiny and elevated principal architects of it to mythic heights. Examining the frontier complex in Fort Smith, Arkansaswhere visitors are greeted at a restored brothel and the reconstructed courtroom and gallows of ';Hanging Judge' Isaac Parker feature prominentlyMaher warns that creating a popular tourist narrative and disconnecting cultural heritage tourism from history minimizes the devastating consequences of imperialism, racism, and sexism and relegitimizes the privilege bestowed upon white men.