A Brief History of Mount Dora, Florida


Book Description

Mount Dora is known for its southern charm and New England look, yet its history is just as engaging. The "Festival City" began with the arrival of pioneer families such as the Drawdys, Simpsons and Tremains. In the 1880s, it became a popular destination for Chautauqua events, when visitors gathered beside Lake Gertrude and Lake Dora for educational and cultural enrichment. In the twentieth century, Mount Dora weathered economic setbacks and racial conflict before becoming a premier city of the arts. Today, this beautiful lakefront community welcomes thousands of visitors to its numerous festivals, events and active shopping village. Join authors Gary McKechnie and Nancy Howell as they celebrate the intriguing history of their town.




A Brief History of Mount Dora, Florida


Book Description

Mount Dora is known for its southern charm and New England look, yet its history is just as engaging. The "Festival City" began with the arrival of pioneer families such as the Drawdys, Simpsons and Tremains. In the 1880s, it became a popular destination for Chautauqua events, when visitors gathered beside Lake Gertrude and Lake Dora for educational and cultural enrichment. In the twentieth century, Mount Dora weathered economic setbacks and racial conflict before becoming a premier city of the arts. Today, this beautiful lakefront community welcomes thousands of visitors to its numerous festivals, events and active shopping village. Join authors Gary McKechnie and Nancy Howell as they celebrate the intriguing history of their town.




Beneath a Ruthless Sun


Book Description

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POST "Compelling, insightful and important, Beneath a Ruthless Sun exposes the corruption of racial bigotry and animus that shadows a community, a state and a nation. A fascinating examination of an injustice story all too familiar and still largely ignored, an engaging and essential read." --Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Devil in the Grove, the gripping true story of a small town with a big secret. In December 1957, the wife of a Florida citrus baron is raped in her home while her husband is away. She claims a "husky Negro" did it, and the sheriff, the infamous racist Willis McCall, does not hesitate to round up a herd of suspects. But within days, McCall turns his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle, mentally impaired white nineteen-year-old. Soon Jesse is railroaded up to the state hospital for the insane, and locked away without trial. But crusading journalist Mabel Norris Reese cannot stop fretting over the case and its baffling outcome. Who was protecting whom, or what? She pursues the story for years, chasing down leads, hitting dead ends, winning unlikely allies. Bit by bit, the unspeakable truths behind a conspiracy that shocked a community into silence begin to surface. Beneath a Ruthless Sun tells a powerful, page-turning story rooted in the fears that rippled through the South as integration began to take hold, sparking a surge of virulent racism that savaged the vulnerable, debased the powerful, and roils our own times still.




Alas, Babylon


Book Description

The classic apocalyptic novel that stunned the world.







The Risleys


Book Description




The Flamingo Feather


Book Description




Tavares


Book Description

Lake County, established May 27, 1887, was carved from portions of Orange and Sumter counties. The Legislature had defined borders but allowed the twenty-two hundred plus registered voters to decide where to place the county seat. Four elections and a courtroom battle later, Tavares, on August 10, 1888, finally became the official seat. The selection process lasted 440 days from start to finish.An 1880 dream of two Orlando Attorneys, Tavares was founded on a historic parcel known as "Hull Place", the homestead of pioneers James and Nancy Hull. The lawyers however did not purchase the land directly from the Hull's. Attorneys Alexander St. Clair-Abrams and partner Robert L. Summerlin bought the undeveloped property, with its "bearing grove", from the estate of George C. Brantley.Platted as a city in 1881, Tavares, when Lake County was formed in 1887, had 20 trains daily passing through its downtown corridor, "more than any Florida depot", said an 1887 visiting correspondent. In six years Tavares, the darling community of Orange County, had blossomed into a Florida railroad hub at the center of 40 plus want-to-be neighboring towns in two counties that, as of May 27, 1887, became 40 plus want-to-be Lake County communities.TAVARES: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County, is the story of how Florida's "Great Lake Region" transitioned from a 19th century wilderness into a vibrant Citrus Belt district. Amazing pioneers dared to dream big - dared to imagine creating such places as Leesburg, Lady Lake, Mount Dora, Montverde, Eldorado, Eustis, Umatilla, Astor, Clermont, Yalaha, and Tavares, to name a few. This is a story of triumph over tragedy; of homesteaders becoming town builders; of steamboats and railroads forging a new homeland, and of remarkable men and women who made it happen. There is even a touch of mystery and intrigue. This is the story of the earliest days of settlement of Florida's Lake County.




Hotel Mavens


Book Description

The word maven is defined by Wikipedia as a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. Since the 1980s it has become more common when the New York Times columnist William Safire adapted it to describe himself as the language maven. The word from Hebrew is mainly confined to American English and was included in the Oxford English Dictionary second edition (1989). My three hotel mavens are: 1) Lucius M. Boomer, one of the most famous hoteliers of his time, was chairman of the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria Corporation. In a career of over half a century, he directed such celebrated hotels as the Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia, the Taft in New Haven, the Lenox in Boston, and the McAlpin, Claridge, Sherry-Netherland and the original as well as the current Waldorf-Astoria in New York. 2) George C. Boldt who was the genius of the original Waldorf-Astoria. It was said of him that he made innkeeping a profession and, more than any man, was responsible for the modern American hotel. 3) Oscar of the Waldorf who was described in 1898 by the New York Sun: In only one New York hotel, however, is there a personage deserving to be called a matre dhotel. Anyone who studies him closely will soon arrive at a firm conviction that he might quite as appropriately have been called General or Admiral, if circumstances had not led him into the hotel business. Oscar knows everybody. Oscar was a superstar of his time and one of the stalwarts who managed both the original and the current Waldorf-Astoria. Among his many duties, Oscar commanded a staff of 1,000 persons bedsides conducting a school for waiters, at the time the only one of its kind in the United States. In 1896, Oscar wrote one of the greatest cookbooks of its time: The Cook Book by Oscar of the Waldorf. It contains 907 pages and 3,455 recipes.




A Land Remembered


Book Description

A Land Remembered has become Florida's favorite novel. Now this Student Edition in two volumes makes this rich, rugged story of the American pioneer spirit more accessible to young readers. Patrick Smith tells of three generations of the MacIveys, a Florida family battling the hardships of the frontier. The story opens in 1858, when Tobias and Emma MacIvey arrive in the Florida wilderness with their son, Zech, to start a new life, and ends in 1968 with Solomon MacIvey, who realizes that his wealth has not been worth the cost to the land. Between is a sweeping story rich in Florida history with a cast of memorable characters who battle wild animals, rustlers, Confederate deserters, mosquitoes, starvation, hurricanes, and freezes to carve a kingdom out of the Florida swamp. In this volume, meet young Zech MacIvey, who learns to ride like the wind through the Florida scrub on Ishmael, his marshtackie horse, his dogs, Nip and Tuck, at this side. His parents, Tobias and Emma, scratch a living from the land, gathering wild cows from the swamp and herding them across the state to market. Zech learns the ways of the land from the Seminoles, with whom his life becomes entwined as he grows into manhood. Next in series > > See all of the books in this series