Dream State: Eight Generations of Swamp Lawyers, Conquistadors, Confederate Daughters, Banana Republicans, and Other Florida Wildlife - Hardcover

Roberts, Diane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743252063 ISBN 13: 9780743252065

Publisher: Free Press, 2004

Synopsis

A history of the twenty-seventh state as reflected by the columnist author's research and family ties includes a detailed exploration of Florida's founding and considers the roles of such recognized figures as Catherine de Medici and Jeb Bush as well as numerous lesser-known historical contributors. 30,000 first printing.

About this title

Book Description:

“With hurricane-force prose, journalist and Florida native Roberts hits the land of orange groves, theme parks and mobile homes with a torrential outpouring of love and hate, affection and disgust . . . If there ever was any doubt about the true nature of the Sunshine State—’where what people think happened is always more important than what really happened’—Roberts puts it to the test in this splendid unofficial history.” —Publishers Weekly Part family memoir, part political commentary, part apologia, Dream State tells the grand and sometimes crazy story of Florida through the eyes of one of its native daughters. Acclaimed journalist and NPR commentator Diane Roberts has many family secrets to tell. Roberts’s ancestors helped settle Florida, kill off its pesky Indians, enslave some of its inhabitants, clear its forests, lay its train tracks, and pave its roads, all the time weaving themselves into the very fabric of the state.            With a storyteller’s talent for setting great scenes, Roberts lays out the sweeping history of eight generations of Browards and Bradfords, Tuckers and Robertses. From Florida’s first inhabitants to those involved in the recent past with the botched presidential election of 2000, Roberts renders them all with a deep, familial affection. While exposing the real people whom Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard have been fictionalizing for years, Dream State ultimately reveals the cogs and wheels that make the state tick.

About the Author:

Diane Roberts is Professor of English at the University of Alabama and a commentator for NPR and the BBC.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0743252063
• ISBN 13: 9780743252065
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368