The Governors of Florida (Hardcover)

Florida Book Awards, Gold Medal in Florida Nonfiction

200 years of Florida history through the stories of its governors

The Governors of Florida is an unparalleled two-hundred-year history of Florida’s highest office. This volume provides the first in-depth examination of all of Florida’s chief executives from the acquisition of Spanish Florida by the United States and the appointment of Andrew Jackson as the territory’s first governor in 1821 to the end of Rick Scott’s tenure in 2019.

Each of the fifty chapters features the life and legacy of a different individual who held the governorship during Florida’s territorial or statehood periods. These brief biographies describe the backgrounds of the governors, the reasons they were elected or appointed, their legislative agendas, stories of how they dealt with crises, their successes and failures, and their impacts on the state. The chapters provide windows into the major issues each governor faced during office, including the Seminole Wars, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, railroad building, Everglades drainage, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, civil rights, education reform, and the death penalty.

Detailing the personalities, decisions, and accomplishments of Florida’s governors as well as vividly portraying the eras they lived through, this is the definitive volume on the office and a fascinating historical journey through the Sunshine State.

Contributors: R. Boyd Murphree | Robert Taylor | Canter Brown Jr. | Mark R. Cheathem | Jim G. Cusick | Robert Cassanello | James M. Denham | Martin A. Dyckman | Heidi Hatfield Edwards | Jon S. Evans | Gordon Harvey | Francis Hodges | Maxine D. Jones | Ric Kabat | Edmund F. Kallina Jr. | Rodney Kite-Powell | Eliot Kleinberg | Joe Knetsch | Debbie Lelekis | Gary R. Mormino | David J. Nelson | Steven Noll | Darryl Paulson | Todd C. Richardson | Larry Eugene Rivers | Larry Omar Rivers | Randy Sanders | Jonathan C. Sheppard | Richard Soash | Scott A. Suarez | Billy Townsend | Daniel R. Weinfeld | Seth A. Weitz

R. Boyd Murphree, project manager at the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries, is a former archivist for the State Archives of Florida and former assistant editor for the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project.

Robert A. Taylor is associate dean and head of the School of Arts and Communication and professor of history at the Florida Institute of Technology. He is the coeditor of This War So Horrible: The Civil War Diary of Hiram Smith Williams, 40th Alabama Confederate Pioneer.