Al Burt's Florida - (Florida History and Culture) (Paperback)

About the Book

This book takes readers on a tour of Florida through the writing of Al Burt, longtime reporter for the
Miami Herald, exploring the charm, substance, and fantasy of a complex and fascinating state.

Book Synopsis

Florida Trust for Historic Preservation Award

Florida Historical Society Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Book Award



A tour of twentieth-century Florida through the writing of a roving reporter



A tour of twentieth-century Florida through the writing of a roving reporter



"Some say that Floridians lack a sense of place--they won't after reading Al Burt."--Ann Henderson, Former executive director, Florida Humanities Council

As a roving reporter for the Miami Herald from 1973 to 1995, Al Burt traveled all of Florida, studying it with the insight of a native and the detached eye of the foreign correspondent he had been. During those years, he observed connections with the state's past and speculated about its future, and, while he was at it, took note of the human frailties and heroisms he witnessed every day. Al Burt's Florida is like a family portrait, a loving but not uncritical view of a complex and fascinating state.



Burt's portrait combines vignettes of notable Floridians--some famous at the time, like Ed Ball, but most better known locally--with those of the state's many special places: Okeechobee in the teens and twenties, Miami Beach in the fifties (when dinner in Havana was only a $26 plane ride away), Wakulla Springs when it served as Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan movie set, modern-day Tallahassee with its formality and grace.



Al Burt himself emerges from this landscape as the remarkable, engaging, and passionate Floridian he is. He takes us in hand, starting from his headquarters in the north Florida scrub, on a tour of the charm, substance, and fantasy of Florida, yesterday and today. And always, he dwells with greatest affection on the smaller places, the real places, the anchors of old Florida--and on those folks who do their best to preserve them. In the process he captures a sense of Florida as home.

A
volume in the Florida History and Culture series, edited by Raymond Arsenault
and Gary R. Mormino

Review Quotes



"Few people have traveled the state more, or
know it more intimately, than Al Burt. For 23 years he wore out tire
treads and shoe leather visiting all corners of the place. . . . Over
and over again one is struck with how Burt managed to catch the last
train, so to speak: to talk to the old people who remembered Florida as
it was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."--Miami Herald



"The former Miami Herald
editor and roving reporter pours out his love and concern for his home
in true tales, shared in the manner of someone who has not only studied
the state's history, but lived it."--Gainesville Sun



"Al Burt's Florida serves as a personal memoir and informal history of Florida. It's filled with memories, good folks, and sharp observations."--St. Petersburg Times



"[Al
Burt] knows the state's secret wonders, its backwoods characters, and
its few undiscovered hamlets better than anyone, and he writes about
them with grace, wit, and charm."--Tampa Tribune



"Burt's
prose is a pleasure to read. . . . He has an exquisite feel for the
land, and he carries his reader from the limestone depths of the
peninsula, up through the marl and the sand, into the land of gopher
tortoises, rat snakes, and sand pines, and finally into an atmosphere
spiked with bugs and stirred by hurricanes."--Florida Historical Quarterly

About the Author

Al Burt (1927-2008) worked as a journalist for 45 years, the last 22 of which he spent as a roving Florida columnist for the Miami Herald. The recipient of numerous journalism awards, he was a freelance contributor to many magazines, including The Nation and Historic Preservation, and is the author of several books, among them The Tropic of Cracker.