3rd Edition! Bob Kealing is the author of six critically acclaimed books about Florida history and culture. He has founded four Florida Heritage sites, and was instrumental in the development of the Kerouac House in Orlando as the home of an active writers-in-residence program. Bob Kealing is a two-time Edward R. Murrow Award and six-time Emmy Award winning television reporter in Central Florida.

“In Benchmarked, Justice James Perry invites readers on a remarkable journey from the segregated South to the halls of Florida’s highest court. With elegance and honesty, this memoir intertwines the personal and the professional, delivering a rich tapestry of Florida history, transformative legal battles, and the unique challenges faced by an African American lawyer breaking barriers. A masterfully written account, this book is essential reading for anyone passionate about justice, history, and the human spirit.” —Gilbert King, Pulitzer prizewinning author of Devil in the Grove

When Florida Breezes, or Florida New and Old was first published in 1882, residents of the state, and Tallahassee in particular, were not happy. Many of them bought the book by Ellen Call Long, just so they could burn it, reducing the number of copies in existence.

Stetson Kennedy (1916-2011) was a life-long activist for social justice, environmental stewardship, and the preservation of traditional cultures. He wrote six published books, contributed to dozens of other volumes, and composed thousands of articles as a journalist and freelance essayist. Stetson used acerbic prose, down-home Southern humor, double entendre, and colorful idioms to engage his readers and to skewer those who would malign or exploit others.

Box Broken Open is the story of Jacksonville architect Ted Pappas who was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as Mid-Century Modern architects and proponents of Brutalism. Pappas often unites ancient tradition with contemporary vision.  

2022 Samuel Proctor Award Winner

John Wayne Mixson served as a Florida state representative, Florida lieutenant governor, and briefly as the 39th governor of Florida. The results of his work while filling these roles continue to positively impact the state of Florida and its citizens.

Author Sid Riley was a political columnist, managing editor, and part owner of The Jackson County Times newspaper. For this book, Riley conducted extensive oral history interviews with John Wayne Mixson, and his wife Margie Mixson.

This fascinating “sketchbook” of Florida history and culture focuses on the rural Red Hills of north Florida. Comprised of what is now Madison, Jefferson, and Leon counties, this region is home to a rich heritage that includes prehistoric people and megafauna, Native Americans, Spanish settlers, British soldiers, and Southern Plantations dependent upon the work of enslaved people. Celt and African traditions became incorporated into the Southern folklore of the area, including colorful traditions and ghost stories.

What We Have Endured tells the story of the Seminole Wars through the eyes of Aheedja, a Seminole woman who suffers through nearly a half-century of brutal warfare, forced displacement, and painful deprivation. Determined to remain in the land of their birth, she and her people struggle against the unforgiving Florida climate and the overwhelming military might of the United States government. Written by noted Seminole War historians and a senior tribal member, What We Have Endured faithfully follows the history of America's longest and costliest war against a Native American nation. Although Aheedja is a fictional character, the sufferings depicted are typical of what many Seminole people experienced at the hands of a nation determined to drive them from their homes and destroy their way of life.

2020 James J. Horgan Book Award Winner

Eleven-year-old Henry's life in Jacksonville, Florida is suddenly changed when his step mother convinces his father to send him and his sister Ruth to a boarding school in neighboring St. Johns County. The siblings quickly learn that their circumstances, and their new home, are not at all what they imagined. Henry struggles to stay out of trouble and avoid the wicked headmistress, Miss Gertrude, and her heavy-handed punishments. Henry learns a lot about himself, and how to survive in difficult situations.

"In the first comprehensive examination of Florida’s remarkably rich library of colonial literature, Have You Not Hard of Floryda? explores how our southernmost state’s multicultural, multilingual roots continue to bear fruit today. The book’s fascinating interdisciplinary approach and delightful prose style create a savory blend of literary analysis and historical narrative, a true feast for anyone interested in the ways our past can shape our future." -- Eddie Huang

John T. Foster Jr. makes a compelling argument that the birth of tourism in Florida did not begin with the railroad barons of the 1880s as is popularly believed, but with abolitionist writers of the Reconstruction era, following the C ivil War. Progressive Northerners were lured to the state with colorful descriptions of desirable weather and abundant natural beauty. It was with these forward-thinking writers that Modern Florida was born.

This book is easy and interesting reading. It presents the life and legacy of the late Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune holistically and concludes with testimonies from living witnesses. The author narrates Dr. Bethune's early years and documents how developments in those years influenced her later accomplishments. Permeating Dr. Bethune's spectacular career is a philosophy based on deep religious convictions and held that work was honorable, no matter how menial the task. - Dr. Oswald P. Bronson President of Bethune-Cookman College, July 19, 2004

2019 David C. Brotemarkle Book Award Winner

This book delves into the life and legendary closet of Orlando fashion icon and philanthropist Harriett Lake (1922-2018). Through personal and vintage photos, lush photography exemplifying Harriett's signature styles, and quotes from the brassy, big-hearted grand dame herself, you will be awed by the magnitude of her wardrobe and magnanimity of this exceptional woman. This unique fashion biography begins with Harriett's childhood during the Great Depression, follows her service as a Marine during World War II, her flight from heartbreak to Miami Beach, and subsequent marriage. Harriett and her husband acquired wealth (and a closet full of jaw-dropping fashion) in Central Florida, thanks to the Disney World triggered 1960s real estate boom.

Stunningly illustrated with more than 800 impeccable photographs illustrating her 96 year life and highlighting over 200 of her favorite and most popular looks, the authors explain the connections between Harriett's life experiences and her fashion choices. Harriett oversaw the photo shoots herself, and expertly styled every look.

2018 James J. Horgan Book Award Winner

It is June 1963 and fifteen-year-old Margaret Jefferson is being arrested at a sit-in at a lunch counter in St. Augustine. The Civil Rights Movement has found its way into her hometown, and Maggie feels a deep need to be a part of it. She believes in the ideals of the movement and the ultimate goal of equality. She also finds the nonviolence that the protestors are committed to very comforting.

However, as the summer and fall of 1963 unfold in St. Augustine, their nonviolent protests are met with rising resistance, aggression, and intimidation from local government officials as well as the Ku Klux Klan. Cattle prods used on protestors, firebombs thrown into the homes of families trying to integrate the schools, teenagers held in jail indefinitely. No one is safe, it seems.

This story, told through Maggie's innocent and hopeful eyes, will help a new generation of young people to understand the strength and sacrifices of those who worked so hard for civil rights in this country. It will also help to shine the spotlight on the role that St. Augustine, and Florida, had in the movement.

2018 David C. Brotemarkle Book Award Winner

Frank Thomas writes and performs songs about the history, people, and places of Florida. Songs such as Old Cracker Cowman, The Flatwoods of Home, Spanish Gold have earned him a loyal following. In 2013, Thomas was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

This songbook, which features lyrics and chords, is the only printed collection of songs by the legendary Frank Thomas. There are more than 80 songs in this collection, with introductions by Frank Thomas, Ann Thomas, and Lisa Thomas.

Thomas' Florida roots run deep. His family has lived here since the late 1700s, participating in the Seminole Indian Wars and the Civil War. When Frank Thomas returned to the Sunshine State in the 1970s, he met Florida Troubadour Will McLean, who encouraged him to write songs about Florida. Thomas joined other folk musicians such as Gamble Rogers, Paul Champion, and Bobby Drawdy in their efforts to preserve Florida stories in song.

Thomas has gained a reputation for strongly encouraging other performers to write songs about Florida history and culture. He performs regularly at the Florida Folk Festival each Memorial Day weekend, and at venues throughout the state.

Bound to Die is the true crime story of Florida serial killer Bobby Joe Long. In 1984 Long was convicted of the heinous murders of nine women in Florida's Tampa Bay area. The first body of 19 year old disco dancer Lana Long was found in a field on Mother's Day. Six months later, the bloody rampage ended when the ninth victim was discovered. All had been tortured with rapes and savagely beaten and raped. The killer's confession of his crimes is haunting. The vividly rendered results of his historical trials and appeals are equally shocking.

Dr. Jerald T. Milanich is Curator Emeritus of Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida, and one of the most respected historical archaeologists in the state.

In this book, Handfuls of History: Stories About Florida’s Past, Dr. Milanich discusses pre-Columbian Florida, Colonial Period people and events, and the nineteenth century shipwreck of the steamship City of Vera Cruz.

Dr. Milanich explores the origins of archaeology in Florida with Clarence B. Moore, and offers advice to future archaeologists.  He may even stir up some controversy as he questions the authenticity of the Miami Circle.

Written in an engaging and conversational style, Handfuls of History: Stories about Florida’s Past is accessible to the general public as well as professional historians and archaeologists.

Andrew Jackson is one of the most controversial figures in Florida history. He invaded Pensacola, the capital of Spanish-controlled Florida, during the War of 1812. He was commander of military operations during the First Seminole War, and his Indian Removal policies sparked the Second Seminole War. He briefly served as the first territorial governor of Florida.

No other person is more closely associated with the "Americanization" of Florida and its transformation from Spanish borderland to Deep South frontier. Jackson's military expeditions ended both Spanish and Native American control over Florida's Big Bend and Panhandle areas. From his own time to the present, opinion is divided on whether he deserves praise or condemnation for his actions.

This book includes scholarly perspectives previously published in the, Florida Historical Quarterly important primary source documents from Jackson's time, and new original analysis from contemporary scholars reflecting upon Jackson's legacy.

2017 Samuel Proctor Award Winner 

The historic photographs published in this book are part of the permanent collection and display at the Hannibal Square Heritage Center, located in Winter Park, Florida, USA. The center is a program of Crealdé School of Art and is operated in partnership with the City of Winter Park. The Heritage Center was established in 2007 as a tribute to the past, present and future of Winter Park's African American community. It is a unique cultural facility that celebrates community heritage through documentary photography and public art. Crealde School of Art is a forty year old, widely recognized visual arts school, offering an educational curriculum of over 100 courses for students of all ages and backgrounds, three galleries, and an award winning outreach program that brings arts and humanities to many underserved communities throughout Central Florida. Its mission is based on the belief that the arts are for everyone; every individual has a story worth telling and something creative to contribute, making a positive impact on family and community life.

2016 Patrick D. Smith Award Winner

Elizabeth's War by John and Mary Lou Missall is a work of fiction based on actual people and situations. At the end of the book, the authors separate fact from fiction and identify their sources. As writers and historians who specialize in the Seminole Wars, John and Mary Lou Missall are particularly qualified to engage in the educated supposition required to "in the blanks" the historical record. This book is a prequel to the Missall's book Hollow Victory: A Novel of the Second Seminole War, which is also published by FHS Press.

2016 Stetson Kennedy Award Winner

Abel Bartley's new book In No Ways Tired is both the unique story of a particular Florida community's struggle with the integration of public schools, and a reflection of similar experiences throughout the South there desegregation "with all deliberate speed" took decades to achieve.

Presented in this volume is the first English translation of French historian Charles de La Roncière's Floride Française: Scénes de la Vie Indienne (1928): a fascinating narrative history of the first French settlements along with hand-colored reproductions of Dutch engraver Theodore de Bry's famous images of Indian life based on pictures by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues.

Established in 1887, the town of Eatonville, Florida, is the oldest incorporated African American municipality in the United States. Writer, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and .30s, claimed Eatonville as her hometown. Since 1990, the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community (P.E.C.) has presented the annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. This book features selected presentations made at the festival over the past quarter century, and other reflections from this important cultural event.

Weona Cleveland was a journalist for more than 30 years at the Melbourne Times and later Florida Today newspaper. Her articles about local history and culture earned her a dedicated audience of readers. In 2006, the Brevard County Commissioners named her Honorary County Historian. This book is a collection of some of Weona Cleveland's best articles about pioneer life in Brevard, Osceola, Orange and Indian River counties, including stories from Haulover Canal, Cape Canaveral, Bovine and Rockledge.

For more than ten thousand years before Christopher Columbus "discovered" the Americas and Juan Ponce de León gave La Florida its name, there were thriving, complex societies of indigenous people living here. The land that would become the state of Florida was home to powerful, innovative tribes including the Timucua, the Apalachee, the Tocobaga, the Calusa, the Ais, and later the Seminole. The fascinating Taíno people populated the Caribbean.

Theodore Morris is known as the preeminent painter of Florida's indigenous people, and he now adds Caribbean culture to his repertoire. His artwork graces the covers of academic books and fills the walls of historical museums and art galleries throughout the state. In this book, Florida & Caribbean Native People: Paintings by Theodore Morris, the artist's own commentary on his work is augmented by the insights of some of Florida's leading archaeologists including Steven H. Koski, Keith Ashley, Bonnie G. McEwan, Brent R. Weisman, Ryan J. Wheeler, Robert S. Carr, Ann S. Cordell, and James P. Pepe.

2013 Samuel Proctor Award Winner

Lawton Chiles was one of the most inspirational and influential politicians to come from Florida. His unique campaign style and passion for improving people.s lives established a legacy that deserves recognition today. John Dos Passos Coggin conducted more than one hundred interviews with the friends, family, and co-workers of Lawton Chiles to create this definitive biography. Coggin.s insightful writing based on extensive research illuminates both the political career and personal life of the fascinating Lawton Chiles. The Florida Historical Society Press is proud to publish this important work.

In 1982, a backhoe operator working at what would become the new Windover Farms housing development in Titusville, Florida, uncovered a human skull. The bones of several other individuals soon emerged from the peat bog. It would be determined that the human remains uncovered at Windover were between 7,000 and 8,000 years old, making them 3,200 years older than King Tutankhamen and 2,000 years older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt. This was just the beginning of an archaeological adventure that continues today.

In January 2001, Rachel Wentz walked away from a career as a firefighter/paramedic in Orlando to pursue a PhD in anthropology, specializing in the analysis of human remains. Her studies at Florida State University focused on ancient skeletons from the Windover site, but took her into the darker world of forensics and beyond. Travel with Dr. Wentz to the famed museums of London, Paris, and Italy, the fragrant landscapes of Ukraine, the beautiful shores of the Caribbean, and back to Florida. This engaging and fast-paced memoir provides the reader a first-hand glimpse into the fascinating world of bioarchaeology, where skeletons hold the clues to past lives and the ancient civilizations from which they came.

2012 Patrick D. Smith Award

The year is 1835 and the Florida Territory is on the verge of a major war. President Andrew Jackson has ordered the Seminole Indians to abandon their homes and move to a reservation west of the Mississippi. Called into action is Col. William Wooster, a career officer who understands that removing the Seminoles will be a long and arduous task. Standing against the colonel is Kachi-Hadjo, a determined Seminole leader who wages a desperate seven-year conflict to remain on his native soil and protect his people’s way of life. Both men fight the merciless climate, growing frustrations, and each other, both hoping the next battle will yield something more than a hollow victory.
Written by Seminole War historians with a deep understanding of this little known conflict, Hollow Victory takes the reader through one of the darkest chapters in American history, through a long and brutal war that left a lasting mark on Florida and has surprising similarities to the conflicts we wage today.

“This is a must read for every railroad buff. It adds to the literature on Henry Bradley Plant and the machinations of late 19th century transportation barons. Plant led an interesting life—as a Confederate and a Yankee—juggling the demands for business success with an ever-changing political milieu. Plant’s achievements rivaled those of Henry Flagler in making modern Florida.” - Nick Wynne, The Florida Historical Society

"The Way Hit Wuz" is a novel about Florida's history similiar to Patrick Smith's book "A Land Remembered". Recently reprinted 2010 with new cover. 

As a Mizell family descendant who married and had children with a Barber, author Mary Ida Bass Barber Shearhart has a personal interest in the infamous Barber-Mizell Family Feud. Florida’s Frontier: The Way Hit Wuz is written as a compelling, action-filled novel set between 1841 and 1870, but is firmly based in historical fact. In addition to offering descriptions of pioneer life in Florida from running cattle, to making soap, to cane grinding, the author provides insight about the Spanish colonization of Florida, the Seminole Indian Wars, the Civil War, and other topics

Stetson Kennedy collected folklore and oral histories throughout Florida for the WPA between 1937 and 1942. The result was this classic Florida book, back in print for the first time in more than twenty years with an Afterword update and dozens of historic photographs never before published with this work. Alan Lomax said, "I doubt very much that a better book about Florida folklife will ever be written."

“I don't know of any book on my whole shelf that hits me any harder than Palmetto Country. It gives me a better trip and taste and look and feel for Florida than I got in the forty-seven states I've actually been in body and tramped in boot. If only, and if only, all our library books could say what [Kennedy does]—the jokes and songs and old ballads about voodoo and the hoodoo and the bigly winds down in your neck of the woodvine.”  --Woody Guthrie Folk Musician and singer-songwriter, This Land is Your Land

2010 Patrick D. Smith Award Winner

More than eighty years before Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings published The Yearling, Cyrus Parkhurst Condit wrote this coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy in Florida who learns to hunt, builds a fence, and takes a fawn as a pet. Undiscovered and unpublished until now, this engaging story is historically significant as one of the first Florida novels ever written. Fascinating historical and literary context is provided by the editors.

Overhead The Sun, a gripping historical novel about race relations in Florida during the late Nineteenth Century. Written by the late John Ashworth, Overhead The Sun is based on the tragic story of Rosewood, a small Florida community of African-Americans that was destroyed by a mob of whites in 1923. The central character in Overhead The Sun is Julia Clayton, a young woman striving mightily to achieve emotional and intellectual independence. Her husband, Tom Clayton, works for Arthur Wilkins (who is based on the real life person of Henry Flagler) who seeks to extend his hotel and railroad empire across the Sunshine State. Neglected and verbally abused, Julia Clayton takes a heretical economics professor, Thorstein Brach, as her lover. The intrigues and conflicts of personality that mark these tortured relationships light up the pages of Overhead The Sun.

2008 Rembert Patrick Award Winner

This book is the story of people of vision and courage, of a small group of prominent Saint Augustine investors who conceived of the Florida waterway and began the first dredging work; of an obscure group of New England capitalists who provided significant financing and obtained a million acres of undeveloped Florida public land in pursuing what was, at best, a speculative enterprise; of innumerable citizen groups like the Florida east coast chamber associations and the larger Atlantic Deeper Waterways Association that demanded at the turn of the last century what they believed was the peoples right-a public waterway, free of the burden of tolls; and finally, of the U>S> Army Corps of Engineers, who conducted all of the Florida waterway's early surveys and assumed the project's control in 1929 to convert what was once a private toll way into Florida's modern-day, toll-free Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

Rudy longs to be an aerialist, but Shorty wants him to follow in his own clown footsteps. When Rudy learns the truth behind his objections, he has hard choices to make. Will he follow his father's path, or will he risk his anger and its repercussions to make his dream a reality?

Fans of the award-winning novels, Tasso of Tarpon Springs and Panther Girl welcome High Above The Hippodrome, a captivating behind-the-scenes story of circus life on the road with The Ringling and Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1927.

2008 James J. Horgan Award Winner

Historical adventures for young Floridians. The short stories of Carolyn Teicher Potts.

This book chronicles examples of Florida's fascinating and funny weirdness. "Florida is the home of more nuttiness per square mile than any place on earth-- and we dare the world to prove us wrong."

Author Eliot Kleinberg is that rarest of Floridians: a native. Born in South Florida, he has spent some four decades in both broadcast and print news, including 30 years at the Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach.

Joe Knetsch has successfully captured the problems and triumphs of early surveyors in Florida as they battled hostile Native Americans, disease, weather and political pressures to "lay out" the Florida Peninsula for settlement. Without these intrepid pioneers of the 19th Century, the Sunshine State would still be a daunting wilderness of swamps and jungles.

The authors are not historians or experts of any kind but they have traversed the waters of the river by air boat from the flood-plain and marshes southwest of Fellsmere which mark its beginning, and later by larger vessel to the point where its waters join one of the great oceans of the world. We have endeaved to show the river as we saw it and to provide accurate descriptions and information.

William Potter served as an International election supervisor in Bosnia-Herzegovina and as the Air Force legal advisor to the Office of the High Representative and government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition, he served as the Head of the Rule of Law Department in the administration of the High Representative Paddy Ashdown.

Great southern cooking and commentary! Easy recipes and terrific anecdotes!

Although he provides some great recipes in this book, he admonishes all cooks to use them as basic guide-lines and adapt them to taste.

Ben Green's Finest Kind is the classic history of Cortez, the small fishing village on the Gulf. Green looks at the history of small commercial fishermen in the town, their struggle to survive increasingly onerous government regulations and how the drug explosion of the '60s and '70s changed the very nature of this small town.

Not unlike all our lives this book is a series of stories, separate but interconnected. They are all true with the exception of some literary license where details were lost in the telling and retelling. Guardian Angel 911 will provide an insight to the sojourn of a native, born in the isolated hammocks and swamps of the real Florida, before the population exploded in the third quarter of the twentieth century. - J.T. Glisson

The book Jacob Summerlin: King of the Crackers by Joe Akerman and Mark Akerman. In this brief biography, Joe and Mark Akerman manage to capture the essence of Jake Summerlin's life and the broader scope of Florida history.

War in Paradise is a collection of articles about the impact of World War II on the Sunshine State. It covers subjects such as (1) German prisoners of war; (2) U-boat attacks along the Florida coast; (3) three Florida natives killed at Pearl Harbor; (4) Army Air Force bombing runs that fell on civilians in Florida; (5) German saboteurs who landed on the Florida peninsula; (6) RAF trainees in Florida; (7) the suicide of a German POW; and (8) the murder of a Floridian in German custody. The book also contains maps, pictures, and sources.