Amazon is egalitarian, as a book marketplace. Call it the great equalizer. Take the book above, for example, from a university press, written in thoroughly academic language. Few will ever read it, although it is deserving of the bestseller list. Dr. Heather Russell has something to say about America and race; something valuable, timely and timeless.
I met her a couple of months ago in her role as lead scholar for the Zora Neale Hurston teacher seminar funded by the NEH at Teaching Florida, an umbrella group of the Florida Humanities Council. She is a brilliant thinker, and she's written an important book.
I do my part to help get the word out by reviewing it on Amazon, by showing it here, and by being very glad that at least its publisher had the good sense to give it a Kindle edition, reasonably priced, although well over the norm of $9.99. The very readers who should have access to it - students of history and literature - probably won't download it at $14.72, unless it is required reading. But at least Heather Russell's many years of work is available to an increasingly wide audience of shameless e-readers - people who read books primarily on their Kindles, Nooks, smart phones, and tablets.
On the other hand, here is another book that almost everyone who cares at all about Florida will probably read, and if they believe it, will come away feeling horrible about the place. T.D. Allman does quite a number on his home state. The only comfort is that much of it is not "The True History of the Sunshine State, " as his subtitle claims.
If you hear him speak before you read the book, you will know that he did not do one speck of primary research. He just put together ten years' worth of internet browsing, from his residences in Paris and New York. It shows in his notes - all secondary sources - many of them shoddy. Any middle school or high school student would be held to higher standards on a history project or term paper.
I met her a couple of months ago in her role as lead scholar for the Zora Neale Hurston teacher seminar funded by the NEH at Teaching Florida, an umbrella group of the Florida Humanities Council. She is a brilliant thinker, and she's written an important book.
I do my part to help get the word out by reviewing it on Amazon, by showing it here, and by being very glad that at least its publisher had the good sense to give it a Kindle edition, reasonably priced, although well over the norm of $9.99. The very readers who should have access to it - students of history and literature - probably won't download it at $14.72, unless it is required reading. But at least Heather Russell's many years of work is available to an increasingly wide audience of shameless e-readers - people who read books primarily on their Kindles, Nooks, smart phones, and tablets.
On the other hand, here is another book that almost everyone who cares at all about Florida will probably read, and if they believe it, will come away feeling horrible about the place. T.D. Allman does quite a number on his home state. The only comfort is that much of it is not "The True History of the Sunshine State, " as his subtitle claims.
If you hear him speak before you read the book, you will know that he did not do one speck of primary research. He just put together ten years' worth of internet browsing, from his residences in Paris and New York. It shows in his notes - all secondary sources - many of them shoddy. Any middle school or high school student would be held to higher standards on a history project or term paper.
If you only read his misinformation on Harriet Beecher Stowe and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - you'll get a belly full of malarkey. He misquotes Stowe and misses altogether her most important writings on Florida. He makes wildly inaccurate claims about Rawlings in a variety of arenas, seeming not to know that she wrote anything more than The Yearling. Click on his cover to read my very watered-down review (if you missed it up above). Amazon will not allow much in-depth criticism, but if you want to read my two earlier and very meaty drafts, let me know.
As you'll see, facts never get in the way of Allman's determination to make Florida seem like a hot mess. Just remember the boast he made on WLRN in Miami, when asked how and where he went about discovering the so-called "True History of the Sunshine State" -
"I'm proud to say, I did no primary research for this book." Enough said.
As you'll see, facts never get in the way of Allman's determination to make Florida seem like a hot mess. Just remember the boast he made on WLRN in Miami, when asked how and where he went about discovering the so-called "True History of the Sunshine State" -
"I'm proud to say, I did no primary research for this book." Enough said.
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