For Sale -American Paradise: How Our Nation Was Sold an Impossible Dream in Florida

by Willie Drye

Overview

Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal for Best Regional Nonfiction in the Southwest

The story of how Florida became entwined with Americans’ 20th-century hopes, dreams, and expectations is also a tale of mass delusion, real estate collapses, and catastrophic hurricanes. The Fantasy of Florida hones in on the experiences of William Jennings Bryan and Edwin Menninger, the two men who shaped the image of Florida that we know today and who sold that image as America’s paradise. The cast of characters also includes the Marx Brothers, Thomas Edison, Al Capone, and Mark Twain. A tale of a colorful and tragicomic era during which the allure and illusion of the American Dream was on full display—a Jazz Age period when Americans started chasing what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “the orgiastic future”—the book reveals how the recent economic collapse in Florida is eerily similar to events that happened there between 1925 and 1928. What sets the mid-1920s’ Florida land boom apart from more recent booms-and-busts, however, is that this was the first modern boom, the first time that emerging new technologies, mass communications and modern advertising techniques were used to sell the nation on the notion that prosperity and happiness are simply there for the taking. Florida’s image as a place where the rules of everyday life don’t apply and winners go to play was formed during this dawn of the age of consumerism when Americans wanted to have fun and make lots of money, and millions of them thought Florida was the perfect place to do that.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493018994
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/20/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Willie Drye has been a reporter/journalist for 30 years, with a recent specialty in covering hurricanes for National Geographic. His book Storm of the Century was made into a documentary for the History Channel.

Editorial Reviews

"Check out For Sale: American Paradise. Drye tells history the way it should be told."

Florida Times-Union

In the early years of the twentieth century, it took the efforts of some very determined people – including William Jennings Bryan and Henry Flagler, cofounder of Standard Oil – to draw the country’s attention to the state of Florida, which so the claims went, represented a huge opportunity for real-estate investors. In addition to developers, the relatively untamed state also attracted the attention of the criminal element: religious leader and Hollow Earth proponent Cyrus Teed; outlaw bank robber, murderer, and pop-culture hero John Ashley; and of course, furniture salesman Al Brown, who’s probably better known by his real surname, Capone. This lively, fascinating look at Florida’s early years profiles all these figures and describes not only the early growth but also the bursting of the bubble in the late 1920s, the result of a declining economy, the increasing profile of the crooks, and a hurricane that destroyed entire cities. Revealing reading for anyone interested in early-twentieth-century American history, boom-and-bust stories, and tales of outlaws.

Booklist

"A fun read and a very interesting and engaging book. For Sale-American Paradise is a paradigmatic American story—looking for the good life. It captures a ton of this deep American restlessness, idealism and determination." William J. Bennett, host of Bill Bennett's Morning in America

From the Publisher