Some Kind of Paradise: A Chronicle of Man and the Land in Florida

"The history of Florida is the story of North America in miniature. By telling it with such eloquence and learning in ‘Some Kind of Paradise,’ Mr. Derr has revealed the dark side of the historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous hypothesis: our national character was indeed shaped by the frontier. . . . [Derr] writes with a journalist’s eye for telling details and an antiquarian’s fondness for digression and quirky facts. . . . The state’s tortuous journey from one extreme to the other is ...