South Beach, at Miami, Florida, has it all: sand, sun, surf, beautiful people, stylish fashions, architecture from the height of American Art Deco to the most modern renderings of steel and glass. The visitor is drawn in a hundred directions at once, trying not to stare, but hoping to take it all in and to hold onto the impressions this place is bound to make. This book captures the sights of the city. The photographer's eye finds the details. Deco colors wash buildings as sun and shadow accentuate their bold designs. Deep blue, cloudless skies rise over the bright beach and sparkling sea, as bathers bask in the sun. Over 100 wonderful color photographs are reminders of the days spent in this fantastic place, taking the reader to the beach, among the trendy shops and hotels, along the tree lined streets with Deco-styled homes. In nearly every direction there is a something to catch the eye. This will be a time capsule of your South Beach experience!

South Beach in the late 1990s is a town of blink-and-you'll-miss-'em nightclubs populated by celebrities, models, mobsters, heiresses, drug dealers, drag queens, and fun seekers of all stripes. It's a place where the famous come to party like locals, the locals party like rock stars behind velvet ropes, and the press is savvy enough to know what not to report. Rachel Baum is a sheltered, career-oriented everygirl when she moves to South Beach from her quiet Miami suburb, searching for a life less ordinary. Quickly making friends among SoBe's most exclusive scenesters, she spends her days building a career and her nights building a reputation. But in a town where friends become enemies faster than highs become hangovers, the life less ordinary turns into more than Rachel bargained for. As she pursues the endless party in penthouses, dive bars, after-hours clubs, and cocaine speakeasies, Rachel struggles to balance her goals and ambitions with the decadence and excess -- especially her drug-fueled, on-again off-again relationship with Yale-graduate-turned-addict John Hood -- that threaten to destroy everything she's always worked for. With tremendous wit and razor-sharp insight, Diary of a South Beach Party Girl portrays the innermost sanctums of South Beach's privileged Beautiful People through the eyes of a no longer innocent heroine.

South Beach Star is a modern day Valley of the Dolls set in South Beach. Life is sweet for Jamie Kidd, a thirty-something writer, till he wakes up one morning to discover that his lover has left town after cleaning out the bank account and leaving Jamie heartbroken, penniless, and somewhat suicidal. Jamie makes the entirely sensible, or so he believes, decision to escape to South Beach where he finds success and quasi-celebrity as a nightlife columnist for the SOUTH BEACH STAR, a weekly tabloid that covers the trendy South Beach scene and the celebrities that populate it. South Beach opens its arms to Jamie, who, like an actor taking on a new role, throws himself into his fabulous new lifestyle covering the notorious celebrity-studded party scene where nightly he mingles with beautiful shallow fashionistas, famous models, and wealthy jet-setters. His coveted lifestyle masks an out-of-control roller-coaster ride of late-night parties and photo-ops, fueled by a gradual addiction to crystal meth. Like many before him, Jamie loses control and falls victim to his fast lifestyle.

In Saving South Beach, historic preservation clashes with development as each side vies for control of South Beach. A spectrum of characters are present, from Barbara Baer Capitman, the ailing middle-aged widow who became an evangelist for the Miami Beach Art Deco district, to Abe Resnick, the millionaire Holocaust survivor determined to stop her. From pioneers to volunteers, from Jewish retirees to Cuban exiles, from residents and business owners to developers and city leaders, each adds another piece to the puzzle, another view of the intense conflict that ensued. Although a number of the area's iconic buildings were demolished, the Miami Design Preservation League succeeded in entering almost half of the neighborhood into the National Register of Historic Places, kicking off a revitalization effort that spread throughout South Beach. Preservationist M. Barron Stofik lived in Miami during this turmoil-ridden period and, through hundreds of interviews and extensive investigation, weaves together dramatic themes of civic heroism, preservation, and cultural change in the passionate human story behind the pastel facades and neon lights.

From the acclaimed bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow comes a remarkably revealing profile of the Miami Beach no one knows–a tale of fabulous excess, thwarted power, and rekindled lives that will take its place among the decade’s best works of social portraiture. Created from a mix of swampland and dredged-up barrier reef, Miami Beach has always been one part drifter-mecca and one part fantasyland, simultaneously a catch basin for con men, fast-talk artists, and shameless self-promoters, and a Shangri-La for sun worshippers and hardcore hedonists. In Miami Beach it’s often said that "if you’re not indicted you’re not invited." But the city’s mad, fascinating complexity resists easy stereotyping. Fool’s Paradise is more than just a present-day profile of a dark Eden. Gaines journeys back into the city’s social and cultural history, unearthing stories of the resort’s past that are every bit as absorbing–and jaw-dropping–as those of its present. The book begins with a snapshot of the city’s current excess (this is, after all, a sun-washed hamlet that boasts, on a per capita basis, more bars–and breast implants–than any other place in America), then plunges into the Beach’s origins, chronicling the audacious rise of such hoteliers as the Fontainebleau’s Ben Novack and the Eden Roc’s Harry Mufson, the sharp-elbowed tactics of Al Capone and Frank Sinatra, and the Mac-10 shooting sprees of the Marielito and Colombian drug lords. From there, the narrative shifts to two wildly eccentric souls who gave their lives to preserving the city’s architectural dazzle and creating its color palette, introduces us to "the Most Powerful Man in Miami Beach," and arrives finally in the modern day, where we meet, among others, a kinky German playboy who once owned a quarter of South Beach and publicly flaunts his sexual escapades; a fabulously successful nightclub promoter whose addictive past seems to have given him a portal into the night world’s id; and a gaggle of young sexy models, dreamers, and schemers on a mission to achieve significance. Evoking the Beach’s surreal blend of flashy Vegas and old Hollywood glamour, as well as its manic desperation and reckless wealth, Gaines persuasively demonstrates that though the Beach is–in the words of its most famous drag queen–"an island of broken toys . . . a place where people get away with things they’d never get away with anyplace else," it casts an irresistible spell.

Finally, a book that takes you beyond the beautiful Art Deco buildings of Miami's South Beach to the glamorous twenty-first century people who build them, work in them, love and live in them. These beautiful people come to South Florida from all over the world, yet they share a surprisingly consistent vision of what is so special about this small shimmering slice of the state. From Cuban-born diva Gloria Estefan to the late Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace and a flock of rock-star hoteliers and real estate developers, their take on "SoBe" is all about the sun, the seaand, of course, the other beautiful people who inhabit their neighborhood. Meet over forty of South Beach's most influential residents and immerse yourself in the fabulous exteriors and interiors of classic old hotels, world-famous restaurants, and soaring contemporary structures that abound in this subtropical paradise. Take a photographic tour of Casa Tua restaurant, the Eden Roc, National, and Raleigh hotels, Mellon Bank, the Wolfsonian Museum, and many more. The beauty here is exceptional, and the people and places of South Beach -- its faces and façades -- are part of what makes this alluring area so special.