Bøker i Florida History and Culture-serien

After its Peruvian discovery in 2002, Phragmipedium kovachii became the rarest and most sought-after orchid in the world. Prices soared to $10,000 on the black market. Then one showed up at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, where every year more than 100,000 people visit. They come for the lush landscape on Sarasota Bay and for Selby's vast orchid collection, one of the most magnificent in the world.The collision between Selby's scientists and the smugglers of Phrag. Kovachii, a rare ladyslipper orchid hailed as the most significant and beautiful new species discovered in a century, led to search warrants, a grand jury investigation, and criminal charges. It made headlines around the country, cost the gardens hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, and led to tremendous internal turmoil.Investigative journalist Craig Pittman unravels this tangled web to shine a spotlight on flaws in the international treaties governing trade in endangered wildlife--which may protect individual plants and animals in shipping but do little to halt the destruction of whole colonies in the wild. The Scent of Scandal unspools like a riveting mystery novel, stranger than anything in Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief or the film Adaptation. Pittman shows how some people can become so obsessed--with beauty, with profit, with fame--that they will ignore everything, even the law.

A chronicle of the murder of Guy Bradley, which represented a milestone in the saga of the Everglades as well as in the broader history of American environmentalism. This biography of Bradley's life is emblematic of the struggle to tame the Florida frontier without destroying it.

Like so many midwesterners since, Julia Daniels and Charles Scott Moseley moved to Florida in the 1880s seeking a warmer climate. This collection of Julia's letters reveals the struggle of a cultured, urban woman adjusting to the hardship and isolation of life in pioneer Florida.

This is the definitive biography of a famous developer and fascinating entrepreneur. Born in Indiana, Carl Fisher helped build the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and headed promotion for the Indy 500. But these feats were only prologue to his grandest adventure, as primary developer and promoter of Miami Beach.

This book tells the story of how NASA transformed Florida's East Coast from an economy based on agriculture and tourism to one of the nation's most influential centers of technology.