A Florida State of Mind

An Unnatural History of Our Weirdest State

By: James D. Wright

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

A witty history of the state that's always in the news, for everything from alligator attacks to zany crimes.

There's an old clip of Bugs Bunny sawing the entire state of Florida off the continent - and every single time a news story springs up about some shenanigans in Florida, someone on the internet posts it in response. Why are we so ready to wave goodbye to the Sunshine State? In A Florida State of Mind: An Unnatural History of Our Weirdest State, James D. Wright makes the case that there are plenty of reasons to be scandalized by the land and its sometimes-kooky, sometimes-terrifying denizens, but there's also plenty of room for hilarity.

Florida didn't just become weird; it's built that way. Uncharted swampland doesn't easily give way to sprawling suburbia. It took violent colonization, land scams to trick non-Floridians into buying undeveloped property, and the development of railroads to benefit one man's hotel empire.

Yet everyone loves Florida: tourists come in droves, and people relocate to Florida constantly (only 36 percent of residents were born there). Crammed with unforgettable stories and facts, A Florida State of Mind will show listeners exactly why.

©2019 James D. Wright (P)2019 Tantor

explains Florida

Covered a number of topics about Florida and all the craziness of the sunshine state.

Not very good

The premise of the book sounds interesting. In reality, it isn’t. Very little of the content covers any of the wackiness of Florida. The writer’s humor isn’t funny, but more like condescending. There are factual errors in the book (example: Ybor City is described as a suburb of Tampa. It isn’t. It is a neighborhood.). The narrator mispronounces a number of words including Ocala, Playalinda and Brevard, among others. All in all, listening to this book was disappointing and a waste of money.

Not accurate

Too many inaccuracies in this book. Seems the sources for information were google and Wikipedia. I’ve lived here for nearly 50 years so they are easy to identify. And if a book is being made into an audio book, it’s a good idea to make sure the pronunciations are correct for names and places.