Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams : A Social History of Modern Florida

by Mormino, Gary R.

• ISBN13: 9780813028187
• ISBN10: 0813028183
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-30
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

From New Spain, to Old South, to New South, to Sunbelt, the story of how and why millions have come to Florida and created a megastate of constant social, cultural, and economic change. Florida is a story of astonishing growth, a state swelling from 500,000 residents at the outset of the 20th century to some 16 million at the end. As recently as mid-century, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, Florida was the smallest state in the South. At the dawn of the millennium, it is the fourth largest in the country, a megastate that was among those introducing new words into the American vernacular: space coast, climate control, growth management, retirement community, theme park, edge cities, shopping mall, boomburbs, beach renourishment, Interstate, and Internet.Land of Sunshine, State of Dreamsattempts to understand the firestorm of change that erupted into modern Florida by examining the great social, cultural, and economic forces driving its transformation. Gary Mormino ranges far and wide across the landscape and boundaries of a place that is at once Americars"s southernmost state and the northernmost outpost of the Caribbean. From the capital, Tallahassee--a day's walk from the Georgia border--to Miami--a city distant but tantalizingly close to Cuba and Haiti--Mormino traces the themes of Floridars"s transformation: the echoes of old Dixie and a vanishing Florida; land booms and tourist empires; revolutions in agriculture, technology, and demographics; the seductions of the beach and the dynamics of a graying population; and the enduring but changing meanings of a dreamstate. Beneath the iconography of popular culture is revealed a complex and complicated social framework that reflects a dizzying passage from New Spain to Old South, New South to Sunbelt.

Author Biography

Gary R. Mormino is professor of history at the University of South Florida, coeditor of Spanish Pathways in Florida, 1492-1992, and coauthor of The Immigrant World of Ybor City (UPF). 

 

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	1	(10)
1. Look Away Dixieland: The Contours of Sunbelt Florida	11	(33)
2. Florida on the Installment Plan: The Third Great Land Boom	44	(32)
3. Tourist Empires and the Invention of Florida: B.D. (Before Disney) to A.D. (After Disney)	76	(47)
4. Old Folks at Home: The Graying of Florida	123	(26)
5. Sunbelt Hues: Cold Wars, Hot Markets, and Nagging Doubts	149	(36)
6. Wondrous Fruit, Bountiful Land: From Farms to Agribusiness	185	(44)
7. Machines in Paradise: Techno Florida	229	(53)
8. The Internationalization of Florida	282	(19)
9. The Beach	301	(54)
Epilogue	355	(14)
Notes	369	(48)
Bibliography	417	(26)
Index	443