Mr. Geo explores Florida, examining the geography, history, and pop culture as well as maps and various learning activities about the state.

Celebrating Florida: Works of Art from the Vickers Collection illustrates in full color a generous selection of paintings and works on paper by some of the world's most significant artists who came to Florida from 1823 to 1950 to capture the "Sunshine State". Of particular interest to students of Florida history are two essays by noted historians Wendell Garrett and Erik Robinson, who discuss the "creation of Florida" and its birth as a state in 1845. Essays on each artist present an aesthetic, historical, social, and cultural overview - designed to clarify the significance of the works of art presented in this first-ever collection of Florida-based art. Essays on each artist with bibliographies by Henry Adams, Gary R. Libby, James Murphy, Erik Robinson, and David Swoyer help to explain the significance of individual works and their place in Florida's history and artistic record. Celebrating Florida: Works of Art from the Vickers Collection offers the most comprehensive study of Florida art currently available. It also serves as the catalog for a traveling exhibition curated at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, Florida, in honor of Florida's Sesquicentennial.

Archie Carr (1909-1987), the eminent naturalist, writer, and conservationist, was particularly entranced by the wildlife and ecosystems of Florida, where he lived for more than 50 years. This book - which includes some of his essays - is full of details and anecdotes about the flora, fauna, and humans that have inhabited Florida's colourful landscape.

A prize-winning reporter, his wife, and their two kids describe life in Disney's vision of the future. In 1997, six months after the first residents had moved into Celebration, Florida-Disney's town of the future with its distinctly retro link to a longed-for past-Doug and Cathy and their two kids closed on their new home and settled down to participate in (and observe) this new venture. Their report from the trenches will surprise both Disney haters and Disney fans. What is it like to start a new community-not a suburb or subdivision, but a town, inted to be a self-supporting community with the best of the new technologies (including the very latest in teaching techniques) and the most cherished elements in American towns that existed before the automobile turned everything into a mall? For almost two years the family lived this experiment firsthand. Their report is vivid, funny, and painful-and it tells us as much about ourselves and our hopes and dreams as it does about the daily reality of building a community from the ground up.

An overview of the traditional, changing folklife from a vibrant southern state

A National Book Award Nominee and a Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year. Over the centuries, Florida has been many things: an unconquered realm protected by geography, a wilderness that ruined Spanish conquistadors, “God’s waiting room,” and a place to start over. Depopulated after the extermination of its original native population, today it’s home to nineteen million. The site of vicious racial violence, including massacres, slavery, and the roll-back of Reconstruction, Florida is now one of our most diverse states, a dynamic multicultural place with an essential role in twenty-first-century America. In Finding Florida, T. D. Allman reclaims the remarkable history of Florida from the state’s mythologizers, apologists, and boosters. Allman traces the discovery, exploration, and settlement of Florida, its transformation from a swamp to “paradise.” Palm Beach, Key West, Miami, Tampa, and Orlando boomed, fortunes were won and lost, land was stolen and flipped, and millions arrived. The product of a decade of research and writing, Finding Florida is the first modern comprehensive history of this fascinating place. “A take-no-prisoners account . . . Extremely timely and relevant.” —The New York Times Book Review “The Seminole Wars, the Civil War, various massacres, Reconstruction, a second Reconstruction, Disney World, the Marielitos, voter suppression—it’s all here, and even Carl Hiaasen couldn’t make it up.” —Booklist, starred review