Oh, Florida!: How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country

Written by Craig Pittman

Narrated by Mike Chamberlain

Oh, Florida! To some people, it's a paradise. To others, it's a punch line. As Oh, Florida! shows, it's both of these and, more important, it's a Petri dish, producing trends that end up influencing the rest of the country. Without Florida there would be no NASCAR, no Bettie Page pinups, no Glenn Beck radio rants, no USA Today, no "Stand Your Ground," . . . you get the idea.

To outsiders, Florida seems baffling. It's a state where the voters went for Barack Obama twice, yet elected a Tea Party candidate as governor. Florida is touted as a carefree paradise, yet it's also known for its perils-alligators, sinkholes, pythons, hurricanes, and sharks, to name a few. It attracts 90 million visitors a year, some drawn by its impressive natural beauty, others bewitched by its manmade fantasies.

Oh, Florida! explores those contradictions and shows how they fit together to make this the most interesting state. It is the first book to explore the reasons why Florida is so wild and weird-and why that's okay. Florida couldn't be Florida without that sense of the unpredictable, unexpected, and unusual lurking behind every palm tree. But there is far more to Florida than its sideshow freakiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781515984153

Craig Pittman

CRAIG PITTMAN is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. He is a native Floridian and in 2013 wrote a popular blog for Slate called "Oh, Florida! " which became the genesis for his book of the same title, and which led to his appearance on TV and radio discussing why Florida is so odd and entertaining. He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife and two children.

Reviews for Oh, Florida!

[zmagic69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wanted a light book and this filled the need.
Florida has always been a melting pot of train wrecks
Very few laws and endless criminal behavior.
But oh my they do it with such flamboyance and determination.

[murderbydeath · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm not sure this is the kind of book that has broad appeal, but as one of the rare true natives of the Sunshine State (as are three previous generations of my dad's side), I had a very vested interest in reading it. I grew up in a blissful bubble of ignorance regarding Florida's off-the-charts location on the crazy scale, and it wasn't until after I moved away that I started hearing all the jokes. I own that I was more than a little bit indignant. Now that I've read this book, I get it. What felt totally normal to me for decades, while living in the midst of it all, when looked at objectively from a distance, is decidedly ... eccentric, to say the least. I'd like to blame all the carpet-baggers, but if I'm being truthful, Florida was invaded by the nutty centuries ago. However, as Pittman points out, we may be crazy, but we're also history makers and trendsetters. For better or worse, a lot of what's good and bad in American can be traced to Florida. NASCAR (admittedly, a matter of perspective as to whether this is a good or bad thing), the space program, USA Today, and authors like Carl Hiaasen, Meg Cabot, Ransom Riggs and Donald J. Sobol. We also have to own the highest rate of concealed carry permits in the nation and the lowest level of funding for mental health programs, a combination most rational people would say is unwise. Also, The National Enquirer. And threaded throughout all the good, bad and ugly are the most hilarious kinds of crazy. "Does it seem strange to you that the beloved figure of Walt Disney would wind up working with a guy tied to the CIA, drugs, Cuban revolutionaries and the Mafia? Does that odd juxtaposition make you feel uncomfortable? In Florida, we call that feeling 'Tuesday'. " Pittman does a great job making just about all Floridians look like the cracked fruitcakes we probably are to some extent, and he does almost as good a job tying all the crazy in to the rest of the country. Occasionally, his tone veers into derisive and it's clear that while he may be a native too, he's not a kool-aid drinker. Floridians should be proud of their eccentricities, but they should be appalled by the truly horrific way we allow our state to be run. I'm not sure we've ever elected a sane politician on a state level; hell, I'm not sure we've ever elected one that was law abiding. Still, I miss my home state. Florida is a part of my soul; a big reason why I can be both conservative and tolerant, why for me anything less than 50mph winds is a breezy day, and why a 10 foot long reptile won't make me blink an eye, but a 2 inch cockroach will send me running, screaming bloody murder all the way. If you've even wondered why Florida is the way it is, this book won't be able to explain why, but it is going to make you laugh.

[knightlight777 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A kind of good take on the strange things that come out of Florida. But when you live here it seems kind of normal so I had heard a lot of these and it only drew and occasional chuckle or shake of the head. You could probably get these stories from any state it's just Florida has them in abundance. I attribute it to the many people from so many places gathering here to contribute their due.Pittman has his journalistic political slant on display but by and large he covers the gamut from the historical to the hysterical. The geographical separation Florida has with the rest of the country is probably for a good reason as a world unto itself.

[meandmybooks-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very entertaining, and, simultaneously, horrifying. I grew up in Florida (moved to NC ten years ago, but Florida is still “home”), so much of the book is to some extent familiar, but Pittman tells fine stories, and there were many people and events here that I was glad to learn about in more detail. Though much of this is loosely connected “weird Florida” trivia, Pittman really does try in each chapter to tie things together and show how Florida events influenced the rest of America. I found this particularly fascinating in chapters 16 & 17, when he talks about how events in St. Augustine and Miami influenced the civil rights and gay rights movements, respectively. The story of activists, both black and white, wading into the Atlantic to protest the “whites only” St. Augustine beaches in 1964, and the white swimmers leaping out of the water, apparently in fear of black skin color transferring to them, reminded me of my mom's story of my grandmother worrying that young black neighbors would swim in our pool while we were away when I was a very small child and we lived in Coconut Grove. My mom thought she was worried, reasonably, about unsupervised children drowning, but was dismayed to learn that my grandmother was specifically concerned about whether black skin might not be “colorfast.” I always thought this was really bizarre (well, I still do), but it turns out that my grandma was expressing a common (if racist) concern of the time (I was born in 1965, so my mom and grandma probably had this conversation in '67 or '68). The story of Anita Bryant and her anti-gay activism in Miami in 1977 also clarified some memories for me, as I remember Bryant and her “a day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine” commercials, but also, vaguely, that there was something that we (my liberal family) didn't like about her. Actually, we were politically liberal, especially on environmental issues, but socially more conservative (and especially in the topics to be discussed, which did not include sex), so I imagine my parents never mentioned to us why we didn't like Ms. Bryant. Anyway, these chapters were especially enlightening for me. The whole book is interesting, though. Florida's contribution to the founding of the National Hurricane Center isn't much of a surprise, and I knew that the first national wildlife refuge, Pelican Island, which we regularly floated past when I was a kid fishing on the Indian River, was in Florida, but I hadn't realized that Florida's “Sunshine Law,” requiring public access to government meetings and records, was so groundbreaking. Of course, we've also contributed the “Stand Your Ground” legislation, “Cops,” and “hanging chads,” not to mention abortion center bombings. And then there are Indian casinos, space rockets, O'Connor v. Donaldson (mental health Supreme Court ruling), USA Today and the National Enquirer. A mixed bag, to be sure, but Pittman certainly establishes Florida's (often weird) influence, for good and for evil, on the rest of the country! My only real complaint with this one is that Pittman is apparently something of a frustrated stand-up comic and too often indulges his taste for wearisomely bad jokes and puns. “Every state has sleazy politicians, but Florida's pols really take the cake – as well as the knife, the plate, and all the candles.” These probably seem less tiresome in blog posts (apparently his “Oh, Florida” blog was the inspiration for this book), but they detract from his book. (Given the outrageousness of his material they would be coals to Newcastle even if they were funny.) And I do wonder whether readers who don't have a strong Florida connection would find this interesting. I found stories about various Florida governors, crooks, and crooked politicians engaging because they were mostly at least slightly familiar, but I doubt whether the history of the antics of politicians in, say, Nebraska, to be so fascinating for me. Still, I guess loads of people have visited Florida to visit the beaches or Disney, so maybe...I picked this because I was feeling homesick, but I wound up learning a lot that I'd somehow missed in my 40 years in Florida. Four stars.