Florida Vistas Book Club: For Sale American Paradise - How Our Nation was Sold on Impossible Dreams in Florida

Event Description

Title: For Sale American Paradise - How Our Nation was Sold on Impossible Dreams in Florida
Author: Willie Drye

Join us for our next Florida history book club meeting at the Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art where we will be discussing the book, For Sale American Paradise - How Our Nation was Sold on Impossible Dreams in Florida. The story of how Florida became entwined with Americas' 20th-century hopes, dreams, and expectations is also a tale of mass delusion, real estate collapses, and catastrophic hurricanes. It 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. 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, 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.

Light refreshments will be served. 

RSVP by calling the Museum at 386-255-0285. 

Admission: Free for members, $5.00 for future members.