Sunshine State Histories: James C. Clark on Presidents in Florida and Claude Pepper’s Epic Defeat, Martin A. Dyckman on The Golden Age of Florida Politics and Robert Kerstein on Inventing the Conch Republic
Saturday, Nov. 17, 11:00 a.m., Room 8316 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)
Author(s) and Guest(s)
James C. Clark
Since the time Andrew Jackson came to fight Indians when La Florida was still a Spanish colony, U.S. Presidents have played a major role in shaping Florida, whether waging wars, protecting the environment, seeking votes, or just drawing media attention to the state's attractions. In his latest book, Presidents in Florida: How the Presidents Have Shaped Florida and How Florida Has Influenced the Presidents (Pineapple Press, $12.95), James C. Clark examines the impact presidents and the sunshine states have had on each other. Clark is also the author of Red Pepper and Gorgeous George: The 1950 Florida Senate Primary (University Press of Florida, $29.95) about the vicious, bare-knuckled campaign between Claude Pepper and George Smathers. Clark is former editor of Orlando magazine, teaches history at the University of Central Florida.
Martin A. Dyckman
Reubin Askew was swept into the governor’s office in 1970 as part of a wave of progressive politics and legislative reform in Florida. A man of uncompromising principle and independence, he was elected primarily on a platform of tax reform. In Reubin O'D. Askew and the Golden Age of Florida Politics (University of Florida Press, $29.95) Martin A. Dyckman reveals how the return of special interests, the rise of partisan politics, unlimited campaign spending, term limits, gerrymandering, and more have eroded the achievements of the Golden Age in subsequent decades. Dyckman, retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times, is the author of Floridian of His Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins and A Most Disorderly Court: Scandal and Reform in the Florida Judiciary.
Robert Kerstein
Famous for six-toed cats in the Hemingway House, Sloppy Joe’s, Jimmy Buffett songs, body paint parade “costumes,” and a brief secession from the Union after which the Conch Republic asked for $1 billion in foreign aid, Key West also lies at the metaphorical edge of our sensibilities. How this unlikely city came to be a tourist mecca is the subject of Key West on the Edge: Inventing the Conch Republic (University Press of Florida, $32.95), Robert Kerstein’s new history of an island that struggles to stay unique in the wake of tourism. Kernstein is professor of government a t the University of Tampa and the author of Politics and Growth in twentieth-Century Tampa.
Schedule
Location
Miami Book Fair International * Miami Dade College
300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33132
Room 8316 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)
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