Did the holiday season creep up this year? Are you scrambling for gifts for friends and family? Do not fear! We have a wonderful selection of books for everyone you might need a gift for. From subjects such as history, nature, cooking, the arts, and more, you no longer have to stress about finding the perfect gifts for your loved ones.
Our holiday sale is in full swing, offering discounts to help make this holiday season stress-free. The following gift guide features some of our newest releases from this year. No more scrambling for gifts; we have got you covered.
To order these books, visit our website and use code HOL24 for discounts. Orders over $75 will receive free shipping within the US and a free tote bag (while supplies last).
2 Books for the Person with a Sunshine State of Mind
Florida Spectacular: Extraordinary Places and Exceptional Lives
By Cathy Salustri
Cathy Salustri celebrates what makes Florida worth a deeper understanding in this trip through its natural beauty and fascinating history. Discover Florida in a new light through little-known moments that illuminate the state’s significance in American and world history. Explore the hidden-in-plain-sight Florida, overlooked treasures, cultural complexities, environmental challenges, and successes.
Tracing Florida Journeys: Explorers, Travelers, and Landscapes Then and Now
By Leslie Kemp Poole
In Tracing Florida Journeys, Leslie Poole delves into the stories of well-known explorers and travelers who came to the peninsula and wrote about their experiences, looking at their words and the paths they took from today’s perspective. Poole combines historical research, interviews with experts, and her personal experiences to tell a revealing story of the state’s natural history.
For the Person Wanting to Add a Twist to Their Dish
Modern Cuban: A Contemporary Approach to Classic Recipes
By Ana Quincoces
Serving a fresh take on Cuban food, Ana Quincoces reimagines traditional recipes for today’s home chefs in Modern Cuban. This cookbook unites generations by helping readers make timeless dishes that showcase the distinctive flavors of classic Cuban cuisine while crafting meals that are accessible to everyone.
For the Person Who Wants All the Sizzle but No Steak
The Florida Vegetarian Cookbook
By Dalia Colón
Serving a fresh take on Cuban food, Ana Quincoces reimagines traditional recipes for today’s home chefs in Modern Cuban. This cookbook unites generations by helping readers make timeless dishes that showcase the distinctive flavors of classic Cuban cuisine while crafting meals that are accessible to everyone.
2 Books for the Person Who Knows a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Dry Tortugas: Stronghold of Nature
By Ian Wilson-Navarro
This book is an immersive journey into the stunning beauty, rich biodiversity, and fragile ecosystems of Dry Tortugas National Park. It combines captivating photographs with insightful narratives to highlight a remote archipelago with profound ecological significance, displaying seagrass beds, coral reefs, and turquoise waters.
Sunset Colonies: A Visual Elegy to South Florida’s Mobile Home Communities
By Diego Alejandro Waisman
In a collection of quiet and telling images, Sunset Colonies portrays the vulnerabilities experienced by residents of South Florida’s mobile home communities amid rapid urban transformation and the threat of economic displacement. Photographer Diego Waisman captures a fractured sense of place in Miami-area neighborhoods that once flourished but are now increasingly forgotten.
For the Historical Detective
Selling Vero Beach: Settler Myths in the Land of the Aís and Seminole
By Kristalyn Marie Shefveland
Selling Vero Beach unpacks real and fabricated pasts, showing how the settler memory of Florida distorted or erased the fascinating actual history of the region. With a wide variety of stories invented to lure investors and tourists, Vero Beach is an intriguing example of why and how certain pasts were concocted to sell Florida land and products.
For the Person Obsessed with True Crime Shows
Sunshine State Mafia: A History of Florida’s Mobsters, Hit Men, and Wise Guys
By Doug Kelly
This book is a vivid, wild ride through a century of Mafia lore. It tells stories of organized crime rings that settled in Florida and made the state their base of operations for bootlegging, gambling, extortion, money laundering, and drug running. With inside accounts and little-known stories of criminal networks in Florida’s past, it is the first book to survey the origins and activities of the Mafia across the state.
3 Books for the Person Who’s Always Ready to Talk Politics
James Hudson: Forgotten Forerunner in the Crusade for Civil Rights
By Larry Omar Rivers
This long-overdue biography is not only an insightful exploration of the intellectual and activist landscape of the Black community from the 1930s to the 1960s but also the story of an unsung hero. Larry Rivers tells the mostly unknown story of James Hudson (1903–1980), who laid a key piece of the groundwork for the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement.
More Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers: Continuing the Struggle
Edited by Kent Spriggs
In this book, twenty-three lawyers discuss their experiences in the struggle to advance and maintain civil rights in the United States South. Kent Spriggs draws attention to the importance of lawyers in facilitating dramatic sociopolitical changes, illustrates the realities of working in this profession, and shows how civil rights were—and still are—tested at every turn.
Fighting Shirley Chisholm
By James Haskins
Published by Library Press @ UF
Shirley Chisholm’s dynamism, intellect, and devotion led her to become the first Black congresswoman and Black woman to run for the presidential nomination. In this carefully woven story, James Haskins tells Shirley Chisholm’s story from childhood to her phenomenally positive impact on her communities and the world.
2 Books for the Environmentalist
Florida Springs: From Geography to Politics and Restoration
By Christopher F. Meindl
This book provides a clear and comprehensive overview of the geography, history, science, and politics of Florida’s springs. It informs readers about the deep past and current issues facing these treasures of the Florida landscape. By challenging oversimplified answers and examining multiple hypotheses, Florida Springs is an indispensable resource for learning about the state’s freshwater wonders.
Tampa Bay: The Story of an Estuary and Its People
By Evan P. Bennett
Tampa Bay, Florida’s largest open-water estuary, has been a flashpoint of environmental struggles and action in recent years. The first book to examine the region’s environmental history, Tampa Bay, uncovers deep-rooted relationships between water, land, and people and offers hope for bringing threatened coastal spaces back from the brink.
For the Person Who Needs to Stop and Smell the Flowers
First Ladies and Their Orchids
By A. A. Chadwick and Arthur E. Chadwick
Distributed by University Press of Florida on behalf of Chadwick & Son Orchids
For as long as orchid hybrids have been made, breeders have named them after prominent women of the day. In the United States, orchids are named for the wives of presidents. The Chadwicks are responsible for much of this history. They acquired, bred, named, or presented the hybrids, got them awarded, corresponded with the first lady (or her children or grandchildren), and then donated the entire collection to the Smithsonian for safekeeping.
For the Person Who Organizes Holiday Excursions
Florida Trail Hikes: Top Scenic Destinations on Florida’s National Scenic Trail
By Sandra Friend and John Keatley
Third Edition
Florida Trail Hikes helps readers of all backgrounds and experience levels plan an outdoor getaway amid Florida’s natural beauty. Updated in this third edition with the most current route details, this book provides full-color maps, options for lengthening and shortening hikes, and information on nearby towns for use as base camps.
For the Collector
Cuba on the Labels: A Selection of Cuba-Themed Cigar Labels Printed Outside of Cuba
By Emilio Cueto
Published by Library Press @ UF
Cuba on the Labels explores how the island of Cuba and one of the island’s top exports, the Cuban cigar, have been immortalized in cigar labels created outside the island. Over three hundred labels are reproduced in large, beautifully detailed images.
2 Books for the Person Who Wants to Get Up and Dance
Pilobolus: A Story of Dance and Life
By Robert Pranzatelli
Written with unprecedented access to the dance theatre company Pilobolus—with insights from unpublished archival materials and interviews with its founders, dancers, and current artistic directors—and featuring both classic and never-before-seen photos, Pilobolus offers previously untold details about the group’s history and the creation of its most significant works.
Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop, and the Dunham Legacy
By Halifu Osumare
Dancing the Afrofuture is the story of a dancer with a long career of artistry and activism who transitioned from performing Black dance to writing it into history as a Black studies scholar. Respected for her work as both a professional dancer and a trailblazing academic, Halifu Osumare shares experiences from her second career documenting Black dance and global pop culture.
For the Poet Who Might Not Know It
Tears and Flowers: A Poet of Migration in Old Key West
Feliciano Castro
Edited by Joy Castro and Rhi Johnson
For the first time, Feliciano Castro’s poetry is available in English. This book provides a rare glimpse into the history of the Cuban community in Key West in the early twentieth century. Tears and Flowers highlights questions of national identity, migration, belonging, and courtship in Cuban émigré society.
To order any of these books at discount prices, visit upress.ufl.edu and use code HOL24 at checkout.
Orders over $75 will receive free shipping within the US and a free tote bag while supplies last. Sale ends December 16, 2024.
Happy holidays to all of our readers!
The Florida Bookshelf 