Oh, Florida!

A New York Times BestsellerOh, Florida! That name. That combination of sounds. Three simple syllables, and yet packing so many mixed messages. To some people, it's a paradise. To others, it's a punch line. As Oh, Florida! shows, it's both of these and, more important, it's a Petri dish, producing trends that end up influencing the rest of the country. Without Florida there would be no NASCAR, no Bettie Page pinups, no Glenn Beck radio rants, no USA Today, no "Stand Your Ground," . . . you get the idea.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 this 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 the other states in the Union, both for good and for ill.

CONTENTSAcknowledgmentsPrologue: The Punch Line State1. Growing Up Floridian2. Flirting with Disaster3. Getting Stucco4. Trading Gators for Beer5. On the Beach6. Road Warriors7. The Tower of Power8. The Gunshine State9. Bad Boys10. God's Waiting Room11. Schoolhouse Rock12. You Bet Your Life13. Space Invaders14. See You in the Funny Papers15. The Sinshine State16. Confederacy of Dunces17. The Friends of Emma Jones18. A Whole New YouEpilogue: The Unified Theory of FloridaAfterword to the 2017 EditionSelect BibliographyIndex 317The notes for the material cited in this book are available at the book's website, oh-florida.com.