Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen / Edition 10

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ISBN-10:: 0813034299
ISBN-13:: 9780813034294
Pub. Date:: 09/13/2009
Publisher:: University Press of Florida

ISBN-10:: 0813034299
ISBN-13:: 9780813034294
Pub. Date:: 09/13/2009
Publisher:: University Press of Florida

Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen / Edition 10

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Overview

"You just cover a lot of territory and you do it aggressively and you do it fairly and you don't play favorite sand you don't take any prisoners. It's the old school of slash-and-burn metropolitan column writing. You just kick ass. That's what you do. And that's what they pay you to do.—Carl Hiaasen

Praise for Kick Ass

"Readers who know Hiaasen only from his bestselling crime novels will find that this collection of columns from the Miami Herald showcases the same voice singing in a different key . . . He writes with an old-time columnist's sense of righteous rage and an utterly current and biting wit."—Publishers Weekly

"Reveals an angry, alert civic muckraker in the pugilistic vein of Mencken or Royko. . . . Hiaasen cut his teeth as an investigative reporter, and this spirit is strong in both his chosen subjects and his wry attention to unforgiving evidentiary detail. . . . Deeply satisfying."—Kirkus Reviews

"Reminiscent of the snarky, opinionated newspaper articles of the great Mark Twain, Hiaasen's columns are finely crafted little gems."—Booklist

"Shows you that Hiaasen's seemingly implausible fictional premises aren't really far-fetched at all. He just knows Florida."—Playboy

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813034294
Publisher:	University Press of Florida
Publication date:	09/13/2009
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	474
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Bestselling author Carl Hiaasen has written Tourist Season, Strip Tease, Sick Puppy, Skinny Dip, and many other novels that have helped define Florida noir. He is also the author of three popular books for young readers, Hoot, Flush, and most recently, Scat. His nonfiction includes Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World and Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport. A Florida native and lifelong resident, Hiaasen still writes regularly for the Miami Herald, where he has worked for 33 years and where these columns first appeared. His Web site is www.carlhiaasen.com. Diane Stevenson teaches research writing in the psychology department at the University of Florida.

Hometown:

Tavernier, Florida

Place of Birth:

South Florida

Education:

Emory University; B.A., University of Florida, 1974

	Preface	xi
	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Introduction	xiv
1.	Welcome to South Florida	1
2.	Murder and Mayhem	32
3.	See It Like a Native	64
4.	Rules Are Different Here	83
5.	The War on Drugs	104
6.	Tourist Season	128
7.	A State of Chaos	158
8.	Cops, Courts, and Lawyers	173
9.	Candidates with Convictions	206
10.	Our Leaders on Parade	242
11.	Stormy Weather	269
12.	Tax Dollars at Work	293
13.	Ralph Sanchez and Other Subsidized Sports	313
14.	Choked on Growth	335
15.	Vanishing Florida	361
16.	The Everglades and Big Sugar	380
17.	Wild Kingdom	405
18.	Small Victories	422

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

A collection of columns from the by the extremely popular mystery writer. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

A public service to his many fans, this compendium of Miami Herald columns by best-selling novelist Carl Hiaasen (Lucky You, 1997, etc.) reveals an angry, alert civic muckraker in the pugilistic vein of Mencken or Royko. Though best known for his ribald crime fiction, with its meticulous universe of South Florida idiocy and venal conspiracy, Hiaasen cut his teeth as an investigative reporter, and this spirit is strong in both his chosen subjects and his wry attention to unforgiving evidentiary detail. As editor Stevenson notes, the collection's thrust, which she constructed by sifting through Hiaasen's 1300-plus columns, was to present his advocacy of "realistic growth and decent government in Florida." Along the way Hiaasen stops to gut innumerable big fish—crooked politicians, rogue cops, insensate tourists, swollen developers—within a rough chronology reaching back to the cocaine-crazed Reagan '80s. Although Hiaasen is a truly funny writer, a stern moral compass lies beneath his slapstick. His quixotic outrage regarding the despoliation of his home state (cf. the columnist/terrorist of his Tourist Season, 1986) is as unforgiving as an Uzi, as authentic as a Waffle House breakfast. Hiaasen's zestful attacks on Miami's many embarrassing or indicted leaders end up addressing the threats posed, for instance, by the crash overpopulation of Florida, epitomized by the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Andrew upon shoddy developments, a dire issue that pro-business boosters (e.g., The Mouse) labor to minimize. But even the loopier pieces (tame dachshund-eating alligators, Geraldo Rivera's faked drug raids) are informed by Hiaasen's unforgiving focus upon the social rot beneath the zanyfacade. Such columns, like his fiction, reveal Hiaasen as a crystalline, pitiless seer of human weakness in much the same vein as his Floridian forbears, Charles Willeford and Harry Crews. Deeply satisfying, both for what it reveals of the serious priorities of a supposedly light novelist and for the outrageous epic of Florida profiteering and entropy within.

Kirkus Reviews

Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen / Edition 10

Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen / Edition 10

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