Rich harvest of Florida books inspires gift ideas
If you’re shopping for turkey and cranberry sauce, you might want to put some garbanzo beans on your grocery list, too. That’s one of the items that were likely on the menu at the real first Thanksgiving — near St. Augustine in 1565, more than 50 years before that Massachusetts meal of legend.
“It’s very difficult to get the powdered-wig states to the north to recognize St. Augustine’s priority among American cities,” the late Florida historian Michael Gannon once noted.
Remembering Florida’s first Thanksgiving has been one of Flashback’s seasonal traditions. Another involves rounding up a few recent books to spark ideas for holiday giving. We have room for only a small sample. The main idea is to start thinking about books as great gifts.
A PICTURE IS WORTH ...
Let’s start with “Florida: A History in Pictures” by Orlando native Mike McGinness and Jeff Davies of Boca Raton (2022, MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, hardcover, 128 pages).
In the book’s introduction, McGinness remembers childhood vacations when his dad would slow down to read every historical marker. The son inherited that love of history and a decade ago started a Facebook group called “Historic Orlando” (now “Historic Orlando — The Original”). He was soon joined by Davies. With the help of a dedicated group of administrators, they expanded to a second site, “Historic Florida — The Original,” and the groups eventually expanded to 200,000 members “and
almost as many photos,” McGinness writes. It’s been a great community for Florida history.
For this book, McGinness and Davies have done a great job choosing more than 130 seldom-seen, black-and-white historic images from all parts of the state, gleaned from a wide variety of archives and private collections and paired with substantial,
information-packed captions. The result is both fun to page through and a great opportunity to learn about Florida’s past.
MAR-A-LAGO TO ROCK ’N’ ROLL
A recent Flashback about the early years of Palm Beach and the estate that cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post christened Mar-a-Lago drew on
Les Standiford’s 2019 book, “Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, and the Rise of America’s Xanadu” (Atlantic Monthly Press, hardcover, 288 pages). Standiford’s books are always well-researched and eminently readable; his “Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean” is essential Florida reading.
Many essential Sunshine State titles are the product of the University Press of Florida (upf.com). Recent books include “Ninety Miles Away: Memories of Early Cuban Exiles” (2022, hardcover, 326 pages), in which Tallahassee-based journalist David Powell brings together interviews with refugees who fled Cuba between 1959 and the 1962 Missile Crisis, along with those who embarked on the Freedom Flights of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It’s been hailed as an excellent example of the power of oral history.
The press has also published such varied works as Bob Beatty’s “Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to the Fillmore East” (2022, 272 pages, paper) and “The Cuban Sandwich: A History in Layers,” by Andrew T. Huse, Bárbara C. Cruz and Jeff Houck (2022, 180 pages, paper).
No stranger to Orlando, Allman author and historian Beatty was the Orange County Regional History Center’s curator of education from 1999 to 2007. He’s also a musician who brings his passion as a fan and training as a historian to this story of how the 1971 Allman Brothers Band album “At Fillmore East” became one of the most important live rock albums in history.
“The Cuban Sandwich” bridges genres, too, and offers “an excellent, approachable resource on Cuban history told through the complexities of a beloved food item,” according to Library Journal.
In addition, an award-winning volume from the press is notable for fans of biographies. “The Extraordinary Life of Jane Wood Reno: Miami’s Trailblazing Journalist” (2020, 324 pages, hardcover) tells the story of “one of the most groundbreaking and colorful American women of the twentieth century,” according to the publisher’s notes. The author is Reno’s grandson, George Hurchalla.
Reno earned a degree in physics during the Depression, explored the Everglades, wrestled alligators, built her own house by hand, interviewed Amelia Earhart, downed shots with Tennessee Williams, traveled the world, and raised four children, one of whom was former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. That’s a life worth reading about.
WHAT’S GOING ON
The folks at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, 445 N. Park Ave. in Winter Park, invite the public to visit for free Friday through Sunday, Nov. 25-27. The Beautiful Music Jazz Quartet will play from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday. The celebration kicks off the museum’s annual “Holidays at the Morse,” with live music continuing from 5 to 8 p.m. on Fridays through December. For more information, visit morsemuseum.org.