"This splendid book is less a portrait and more a series of mug shots of the nation’s most mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up state. In an even dozen essays, York views his native soil with a dash of scorn, a spoonful of skepticism, and a ton of abiding love."
Biographia Floridiana:
Essaying Florida
By Lamar York
Who can explain Florida?
The nation’s third largest state boasts a booming economy and plays kingmaker in presidential elections. Yet it is also the strangest. It is not quite Southern and not quite Northern. No other state can claim such a long and tumultuous history, yet in no other is the past so ignored. Here, tourists outnumber residents five to one.
In this collection of a dozen beautifully written essays, Biographia Floridiana sheds welcome light on why the Sunshine State is the most difficult to define. Author Lamar York, founding editor of The Chattahoochee Review, one of the South’s leading literary journals, marries his love for the essay with his passion for the mystery and romance of his home state—what he calls “the Florida of contradictions.”