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Carregando... Tropic of Hopes: California, Florida, and the Selling of American Paradise, 1869-1929de Henry Knight
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An examination of how land barons, railroad kingpins, and journalists, among others, "sold" Americans on the idea of Florida and California as a paradise within reach. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)330.9759Social sciences Economics Economics Economic geography and history North America Southeastern U.S. FloridaClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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There was an interesting and tangled web of motivations and history involved in settling California and Florida. These states were seen as large waste space where Americans could move and terraform the land to their wishes. Large swaths of the states could be “upcycled” into agricultural paradises to grow exotic (and possibly costly) produce. But, of course, this came in direct contention with environmental concerns. Secondly, the states were sold as semi-tropic wonderlands where bliss and sunshine intermingled. On the flip side, these advertisements were implicitly colonialist by saying that the American tropics were better because they didn’t have pesky island natives dotting the landscape. Each aspect of selling California and Florida folded into the political and social landscape of the time and this continued until 1929 (when the economic boom time came to a sudden halt).
Knight’s writing is academic first and historical second, but not truly intended for the amateur reader. It is largely an economic history, so it’s naturally a bit dry. There are a ton of resources in the bibliography for further reading and the author does his best to cover all the bases here. It’s not the first book I would run to, but it was definitely interesting to think about the affect of boosterism on the social landscape and how the states became defined in the American psyche. This would make a good addition for those interested in small-scale histories or economic trends. ( )