"This book uses the eight large history murals, by artist Christopher Still, that decorate the walls of the House of Representatives to help tell the story of Florida. The broad themes of the paintings and many of the symbolic elements they contain serve to introduce some of the people and events that contributed to the state's vivid history. Contained within each chapter are brief comments and photographs that give a glimpse into the evolving role of Florida's lawmaking institutions."--Page [7].

The Florida pioneer cow hunters gave birth to the cattle industry. Florida, discovered by Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon in the 1500s, left behind cattle that roamed the peninsula hundreds of years. In the 1800s, new settlers gathered-up the scrub cattle and bred them with their herds. As cracker whips snapped, cow hunters rounded-up their herds and drove them by the thousands to coastal markets on the old cracker trails. It was a dangerous passage. The legendary cow hunters are todays ranchers. This book is about the past and the future of ranching in Florida as a new generation takes over the reins with some heirs choosing another profession and selling the family ranch. I hope the reader will reflect upon the valuable lessons these ranchers reveal about history and survival.

Champions do extra. They sweep the sheds. They follow the spearhead. They keep a blue head. They are good ancestors. In Legacy, best-selling author James Kerr goes deep into the heart of the world's most successful sporting team, the legendary All Blacks of New Zealand, to reveal 15 powerful and practical lessons for leadership and business. Legacy is a unique, inspiring handbook for leaders in all fields, and asks: What are the secrets of success - sustained success? How do you achieve world-class standards, day after day, week after week, year after year? How do you handle pressure? How do you train to win at the highest level? What do you leave behind you after you're gone? What will be your legacy?

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--mainly to her husband, who made frequent business trips north, and to her close friend Eliza Slade--reveals the struggle of a cultured, urban woman adjusting to the hardship and isolation of life in pioneer Florida. And then coming to love it. Tramping through the unsullied land surrounding the Limona community near Tampa, where they settled, she gloried in her "neglected corner in the Garden of Eden," where she "could look up fifty feet and see air plants growing on the branches of great oaks and hundreds of ferns nodding . . . in the sunlight and gray moss moving through the trees like mist." "Think of me gazing up among crane’s nests with redbirds in my own oaks," she wrote. "Even in the nighttime, a mocking bird often sings to me of all the beautiful things I love." Julia (herself a published writer) selected these unedited letters and copied them for her family into a thick leather book. Like characters in a novel, the friends and relatives she describes crackle with personality: a flamboyant Russian proclaims his version of communism, a New England spinster counters with Utopian visions, and a university professor retreats from the ivory tower to agricultural experimentation. Readers observe Julia’s flair for making daily life cheerful and they meet the couple’s two adored sons and Scott’s children by an earlier marriage, as well as Cracker settlers, cattle runners, and assorted seekers of health or wealth. An artist, Julia created a distinctive home designed and decorated in the manner of the pre-Raphaelites. Her palmetto fiber wall covering was exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and survives today. The Florida house, named The Nest, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Accompanied by 71 photographs of Julia’s home and family, these letters transcend the life of one woman to capture the experience and spirit of 19th-century Florida.

Facing Florida is the third volume of a series sponsored by the Academy of American Franciscan History and Flagler College exploring the Franciscan legacy in the Spanish Borderlands. This volume focuses specifically on early modern southeastern America. The volume's multidisciplinary approach, Dr. Kathleen Deagan notes in the introduction, provides us "with new multivalent scholarship that often challenges prevailing assumptions about motives, social relations and power structures in the mission systems." Despite the diversity of topics in the volume, several thematic threads run through the essays. One is a concern with locating belief, motive and intention in past actors. Eliciting thought and belief in the past is a notoriously murky undertaking, but one that is directly relevant to understanding the legacy of the Franciscan project in America. Another thread in the volume is a concern with language and meaning, particularly in the ways language has conditioned how we understand the past from written and iconographic sources. A third is "exemplars," with a meaning similar to that used by Franciscan friars in conversion. Many of the essays in the volume incorporate historical anecdote, but some of the contributors highlight the ways that foregrounding a particular individual or event can bring important but underrepresented issues into sharper focus. The result is an important new collection that explores innovative avenues in the study of southeastern American Indian culture and religion prior to the 1900s.

Amanda Childs, Attorney at Law, also moonlights as parish organist at St. Catherines Episcopal Church, Mainville. A widow, she lost her husband Andrew, an FBI agent, four years ago when he was mysteriously killed. The details of his death were never disclosed by the authorities. Amanda has never remarried. Instead, Amanda has thrown herself into her law practice, as well as immersed herself in the musical and church activities in the small town of Mainville. Her dear friend and constant companion is Marjorie Witherspoon, an older and wealthy woman who lost her husband and daughter, Amandas best friend, in an automobile accident fifteen years earlier. Together they are active in church and community activities. Amandas friend Marjy succumbs in a valiant fight against cancer. Amanda finds herself again alone and struggling with her grief and loneliness. In the aftermath of Marjys death, Amanda discovers herself suddenly named in Marjories new will as trustee for several large projects on behalf of the church, and as residuary legatee, the estate being in excess of fifty million dollars. The day of the memorial service, the Bishop, Stephen Marks, who is celebrating the Eucharist, is handed a letter from Marjorie Witherspoon, to whom he was engaged years ago. He staggers out of church during the service, and suffers a heart attack. Amanda finds him, and her intervention helps save his life. Later at the wake Amanda becomes violently ill and passes out. There are some rumblings in the community that she is actually a closet alcoholic and pill addict. The day after the memorial service, Amanda is visited by an auditor from the Presiding Bishop, who is investigating unexplained disappearances of monies from the diocese and church, the vehicle seemingly through the recital series fund she and Marjorie had set up. Suspicion turns to Amanda, as allegations are made that she has unduly influenced Marjorie Witherspoon in order to inherit, as well as that she has set up a corporation for the embezzlement of funds from the church. Amanda finds herself embroiled in possible scandal and criminal investigation, as Connor Thomson, the auditor retained by the Presiding Bishops office, continues to encounter and engage her in his search for evidence. Her close childhood friend Bill Barnes, another attorney from an old established family in town, a perennial playboy and recent widower, reappears at her side, trying to seduce her into marriage. Amanda is faced with a dilemma of who to trust as she is mired in suspicion and the evidence of fraud points to her. Mysterious incidents threaten her life and keep her on edge. In the meantime she must fend off the accusations of Connor Thomson and the advances of Bill Barnes, while making arrangements to get away to New York to see Malachi Feinstein, the attorney handling Marjories estate, who urges her to meet with him without delay. As Amanda is drawn more and more into danger, she is unaware that the small-town secrets regarding her and those she has loved, events about which she has been in the dark, are about to be revealed.