This is the first in a series of collections of fiction and nonfiction about Florida by legendary writers who came here—some to escape the chilly North, some to find freedom, and some to investigate what the fuss was all about. From Audubon in 1834 to Dave Barry in 1990, these writers reveal Florida's natural beauty and her residents' human foibles. In poetry, John Greenleaf Whittier exposes our shameful slave-holding past, and Elizabeth Bishop extols our turtles and sandbars and tropical rain. Jules Verne shoots a moon rocket off from Tampa, and Hunter Thompson delivers up his own gonzo brand of journalism in a story of marine salvage in the Keys. Hemingway rants about the government's laxity in the face of tragedy, while Harriet Beecher Stowe offers some advice on the time-honored practice of buying land in the Sunshine State.
