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T. D. Allman

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Finding Florida: The True History of the Sunshine State Kindle Edition

by T. D. Allman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.0 284 ratings

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A National Book Award Nominee and a Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year.

Over the centuries, Florida has been many things: an unconquered realm protected by geography, a wilderness that ruined Spanish conquistadors, “God’s waiting room,” and a place to start over. Depopulated after the extermination of its original native population, today it’s home to nineteen million. The site of vicious racial violence, including massacres, slavery, and the roll-back of Reconstruction, Florida is now one of our most diverse states, a dynamic multicultural place with an essential role in twenty-first-century America.

In Finding Florida, T. D. Allman reclaims the remarkable history of Florida from the state’s mythologizers, apologists, and boosters. Allman traces the discovery, exploration, and settlement of Florida, its transformation from a swamp to “paradise.” Palm Beach, Key West, Miami, Tampa, and Orlando boomed, fortunes were won and lost, land was stolen and flipped, and millions arrived. The product of a decade of research and writing, Finding Florida is the first modern comprehensive history of this fascinating place.

“A take-no-prisoners account . . . Extremely timely and relevant.” —The New York Times Book Review

“The Seminole Wars, the Civil War, various massacres, Reconstruction, a second Reconstruction, Disney World, the Marielitos, voter suppression—it’s all here, and even Carl Hiaasen couldn’t make it up.” —Booklist, starred review

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Allman’s engaging, eye-opening, and heavily researched history of Florida spans half a milllennium, from the myth of Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth to the 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and it is a fulsome cavalcade of would-be conquistadors, epically corrupt and racist politicans, and oligarch-wannabes. Allman argues that these individuals’ ideas about Florida were wildly wrong. Ponce was looking for gold in a state devoid of metals; even Presidents Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison schemed to control Florida only to learn that the place had no resources. Florida only consumes resources. “People were constantly ruining Florida; Florida ruined them right back,” he writes. The Seminole Wars, the Civil War, various massacres, Reconstruction, a second Reconstruction, Disney World, the Marielitos, voter suppression—it’s all here, and even Carl Hiaasen couldn’t make it up. This is history for the intelligent generalist, and Allman writes with style, passion, and real outrage at Florida’s odious political history. Readers will be struck by his conclusion that much of America—as Florida has long done—is abandoning verifiable facts for beliefs that are often utter nonsense. But, hey, it was sunny and 80 degrees in Florida today. --Thomas Gaughan

From Bookforum

Finding Florida is an immense and important work, an overdue survey and indictment of the Sunshine State — and the way Americans increasingly live now. —Maud Newton

Review

A take-no-prisoners account . . . extremely timely and relevant.”New York Times Book Review

Gripping.”Salon.com

A magisterial rip at the state’s invaders, conquerors and rulers.”Orlando Magazine

A rich and lively history of Florida, minus the Disney gloss . . . [Allman] shatters five centuries of mythmaking to tell the real story. . . . A splendid rendering of the messy human story of our fourth-most populous state.”Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Allman’s engaging, eye-opening, and heavily researched history of Florida spans half a millennium, from the myth of Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth to the 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and it is a fulsome cavalcade of would-be conquistadors, epically corrupt and racist politicians, and oligarch wannabes."Booklist

"An immense and important work."Bookforum

"I loved Allman's extraordinary book. . . . Almost every county in Florida bears the name of a butcher, a slavedriver, a madman, a scoundrel or a thief, in a state where for half a millennium the governing mandate seems to be Defeat the Truth, Triumph over Reality. T.D. Allman's counter-narrative to all the pretty lies is a scouring hurricane of research, investigation, and soul-cleansing wrath, and I doubt there has ever been a better, or more important, book written about the Sunshine State, the birthplace of imperial hubris, American-style."Bob Shacochis, author of The Immaculate Invasion and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

"Equal parts social analysis, historical review, and jeremiad, Finding Florida is a passionate, often scathing, and remarkably comprehensive encounter with a confounding, contradictory, and ever-elusive place. If your idea of hell is being chained to a galley oar between a politician and a Chamber of Commerce exec, then you are likely to love this book."Les Standiford, author of Last Train to Paradise

Manuscripts repeatedly find their way into print that ignore the reality of Florida’s past and, in so doing, skew our understanding of what Florida has been, what it is now, what it’s likely to become, and what that means for everyone. T. D. Allman’s book turns all that on its head. It directly challenges the existing historiography with highly intelligent insight and crafting of narrative in a way that permits the reader to immerse himself in a world far from the expected one. Finding Florida is provocative to the point of daring. Thomas Jefferson claimed a little revolution was needed about every twenty years. Florida and its historiography is long overdue for one.”Canter Brown, Jr., Professor of History, Fort Valley State University

An extraordinary tome . . . Finding Florida offers a history lesson that is long overdue."Birmingham Times

For the general reader, Finding Florida is a catalyst for hearty discussions and more reading.”Authentic Florida

Finding Florida is fascinating, comprehensive, and accessible to the non-specialist reader. While Allman covers an enormous amount of materialtaking Florida from uninhabited swampland to the sidewalk culture of South Beachhe does so in such engaging ways that the reader is never overwhelmed. Indeed, each chapter is in itself a satisfying and illuminating narrative, stock full of vivid characters. Somehow he has managed to pull together a compelling read without sacrificing historical substance, a feat to which many professional historians aspire. His wry voice conveys a point of view that gently pushes readers to understand Florida as an American synecdoche.”Glenda Gilmore, Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History, Yale University

Allman provides connections between events, trends, individuals, cultures, geography and geology that all worked to shape Florida’s past and our future. But the real reason to pick up this book is that it’s a ripping good read; with its fast pace, wry humor, polished prose, and compelling story, I just could not put it down.”Thomas Van Lent, senior scientist at the Everglades Foundation

[From] a raconteur of rare qualities . . . [one] of the fiercest and most prescient nonfiction books written about the Sunshine State in the past 40 years.”—Palm Beach Arts Paper

Finding Florida is a must-read for any Florida resident who is interested in the state’s history.”EU Jacksonville Magazine

About the Author

T.D. Allman is the author of Miami: City of the Future, and Rogue State: America at War with the World. A native Floridian, Harvard graduate, and former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, Allman was for many years the foreign correspondent of Vanity Fair, and is credited with uncovering the CIA's "secret war" (a phrase he coined) in Laos. He has written about Florida for Esquire and National Geographic, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper's, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Le Monde, and The Economist, among other publications. He divides his time between Miami, New York, and the south of France.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009W6VBIS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atlantic Monthly Press (March 5, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 5, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 11769 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 578 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #419,934 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #88 in History of U.S. Immigration
- #286 in History of Southern U.S.
- #5,551 in History (Kindle Store)

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4.0 284 ratings

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J. Hendershot

A Must Read

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2013

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This is not a history book. It is a book about the history and the "history books" written about Florida and elsewhere in the US. As such, it is mostly excellent and should be required reading for anyone wanting an introduction into the world of why we need to know more about what really happened in this state and this country - as opposed to the sanitized BS and propaganda we were taught in school - or the giant amount of information that was suppressed or ignored and not taught at all. There are a few small errors - for example, he says there is no monument or statue for Pedro Menendez in St Augustine (We have Menendez HS and a statue of him in front of City Hall). But as a 40 year resident of St Augustine, I can say this book rings true and fills in a lot of blanks for me. As someone who has lived most of his life here , I say, yup, this all makes a lot of sense. And he's right about Menendez overall: Nobody in St. Augustine thinks of him as some heroic guy they need to be reminded of. If his statue disappeared, there wouldn't be riots. If the High School were renamed after say, Osceola - I don't think there would be a protest. We all know what Menendez did. It's common knowledge among those who didn't move here last week.

Thankfully, the book goes way beyond that. it explores, among other things, the fact that Florida had free blacks, some of whom were part of the Seminoles and all of whom really hoped the Spanish wouldn't fall to the USA, for fear of being enslaved like the black people in the rest of the southern USA. Their fears were well founded and that is exactly what happened, in a most brutal fashion. I don't remember reading about that in school. Do you?

There are a few errors. For example, Carl Hiaasen's first book is cited in the index as "Hurricane Season" - actual title: "Tourist Season". These errors are minor and I hope they will be corrected in future editions. But as far as the rest of the book goes, damn, it sure rings true to me. A most maddening and enjoyable and revealing book.

Read it.

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Good Amazon Customer

The book Title is accurate....

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2023

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As the book details, most everything the average person knows about Florida is wrong!
In this case, it's not just a lack of knowledge - it's all by design (purposely) that the generally sad history of Florida has been hidden.
Powerful people even paid Scholars to lie so they could base textbooks on the BS.
Of course, the children in FL are taught the lies...
As one interesting example, Florida - prior to US conquering it by Force - was a place of great diversity and tolerance. Black folks, Natives, Immigrants, etc. were all intermarried and free (both Spanish and French were fine with this). It was only late in the game that the US Killed off most of the "free" Black Folks and instituted Slavery.
Another clear lesson of FL History should be (but is not) the fact that most every effort in Florida eventually lost money (went bankrupt) or never made any in the first place. This continues to the present day. People and $ constantly try to remake Florida...and Florida (water, hurricanes, weather, etc.) ends up beating them!
Yet another tidbit - as late as 1960s a Racially mixed Couple were arrested, convicted and sentenced to Hard Labor....for LIVING TOGETHER.

The real summary...or relevance...is that nothing has really changed. White Supremacy is the foundation for most everything in Florida. While they don't say it "out loud" as much any longer, previous plans (serious ones - from Pols and the Legislature) called for exporting 100% of the Black Population as part of the Economic Plan.

One person found this helpful

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William

This Is An Interesting Book About The History Of Florida.

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2019

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I found this book to be an interesting book about the history of Florida. I read this book for my own personal knowledge. This book covers various time periods in Florida's history. It does have some interesting pictures in it too. Some of the interesting information mentioned in this book includes the following information: The original Disneyland covered only about 300 acres. The bodies of water in Central Florida were naturally tannin brown color. Disney World did not want its lakes to be tannin brown. Disney World wanted their lakes to be sparkling blue. Therefore, the sinkholes were drained, the sludge removed, and filter water pumped into the resulting lagoons. In Florida, Disneyland became Disney World, nearly 150 times the size of the original in CA. Disney acquired more than 40 square miles of land for just over $5million, or less than $200 an acre. Being a chronic smoker, Walt Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966. The first Disney World monorail crash occurred in February 1974, four months after the Monorail began operation. By the 1980's decade, Disney World accounted for roughly 40% of Florida vacationers. By 2010, more than three million Canadians, nearly 10% of Canada's entire population were visiting Florida each year.

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M Clark

Everything you learned in school about Florida history was wrong

Reviewed in Germany on July 14, 2016

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This book explains why everything you learned in your Florida history classes was wrong. It also describes how brutal and racist much of Florida's real history actually was. Although I finished the book several weeks ago, it has stayed in my mind so much that I am compelled to add an even stronger recommendation to read the book.

Some of the highlights for me were:
1) The origins of the myth of Ponce de Leon and De Soto. I remember my school books preaching the myth. Allman's book debunks almost everything we learned
2) The way that Florida became part of the USA is very similar to the strategy used by Russia to take over the Crimea. Although the school books teach that Florida was eventually purchased, somebody failed to get a receipt for the purchase. Allman claims that Florida was never purchased.
3) The role of Florida in the Civil War where large parts of the state were permanently occupied by Union troops. One of the few Civil War battles fought in the state was less than decisive for the southern troops because they were too busy massacring black Union soldiers.
4) Reading the White Supremacist backgrounds of the families for which Florida cities and counties were named for. For example, Gainesville was named for a general responsible for the death of hundreds of peaceful black and Seminole settlers in northern Florida. Broward county was named after somebody who wanted to send all blacks out of the state and one of the Brevards was responsible for numerous racist myths that went into the Florida textbooks.

One of the Florida newspapers performed a fact-check of the book when it first came out and only raised minor issues of facts.

wendy clarkson

Very interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2013

Verified Purchase

Recently visited Florida, so found this a fascinating read, and a good gift to give to our hosts in Florida.
A good and quick delivery - thank you

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