Thomas Kenning Book order

Far and away, there are more recreational craft registered in Florida than any other single state. But for some of Florida's boat owners, life on the water is anything but a dream. Buffeted by hurricanes, swamped by the misfortunes of a distressed middle class, a surprising number of Florida's boats are derelict--adrift, submerged, or otherwise unseaworthy. They are lodged under bridges, wrapped in the arms of mangroves, slowly grinding oyster beds under their own broken keels. These are Florida's abandoned boats. While state and local governments scramble to meet the costs of salvage, thousands of foundering boats have run aground all along the expansive coastline of the Sunshine State. These wrecks aren't headline-grabbing disasters. The cheeky names scrawled on the hulls of these craft won't go down in any history book. Rather, the drama inherent in these orphaned vessels is more human in scale--the dashed wreckage of an aspirational life of leisure, unmoored and out of reach. Florida's Abandoned Boats is a dynamic photographic essay from Florida author Thomas Kenning, presenting 140 haunting portraits of these scale-model shipwrecks--a sinking vision of good times gone bad.

The decades after World War II were a golden age for roadside attractions in the Sunshine State. The advent of the family automobile put Florida's exotic flora and fauna within easy reach for millions of curious Americans. Entrepreneurs were happy to meet that demand, setting up for-profit nature parks around four of Florida's most splendid natural springs--at Silver Springs, Homosassa, Rainbow Springs, and Weeki Wachee. To distinguish themselves in a crowded field, these roadside operators upped the ante on weird, sweetening nature's majesty with theme park fantasy in the form of hippos, macaques, and mermaids, oh my! Though these gimmicky roadside parks ultimately fell out of favor as commercial ventures, this truly wooly and weird chapter in Florida's history lives on, fully-integrated by popular demand into the state park system. Lovingly documented across more than 135 full-color photographs, Nature's Own A History of Florida's Roadside Springs presents a living history of Florida's bygone roadside era--a special kind of man-made Florida wildness vying for attention alongside the native, natural Florida wilderness that we all know and love.

Consider these improbable vistas found along the shores of Tampa Bay--an abandoned island fortress stands guard over a federally-designated bird sanctuary. The remains of a ruined cross-bay bridge are repurposed into one of the best fishing spots in the bay. A failed movie studio serves as the backlot to a thriving intertidal mangrove forest. An active power plant provides the region's most reliable refuge for vulnerable manatees. From Philippe Park to Fort DeSoto, from Boyd Hill to Weedon Island, from the Skyway Fishing Pier to Big Bend Manatee Viewing Center, The Unlikely Parks of Tampa Bay: A Scenic History offers a rousing look at the roundabout backstories behind ten of the region's most beloved natural spaces. Featuring more than 130 stunning photos, it is also a reminder--in case you needed it--that wild Florida is very much alive in Tampa Bay.

They rise, limbs interlocked like a mighty phalanx engaged in a slow northward march along Florida's coast. Collectively, they are battered and diminished after a century-long struggle. Yet, dutiful and resilient, they stand strong against hurricanes and storm surge, as well as their deadliest foe, the dreaded South Florida real estate developer. They are mangroves--a truly remarkable and underappreciated form of plant life. Mangroves are nursery to dozens of species of commercially harvested fish; important anchors for the filter feeders who keep our waters clean; more effective than any seawall in halting coastal erosion; and bulwark against destructive waves and wind alike. What else do you need? Florida's Mangroves: A Slightly Salty History lays out the glorious past, tenuous present, and hazy future of Florida's mangrove forests. Reporting from the Ten Thousand Islands to Cedar Key, from Weedon Island Preserve to Flamingo Point at the southern tip of Everglades National Park, and incorporating 140 lavish photos, historian Thomas Kenning offers a lively primer on the way that human activity in Florida has shaped--and, in turn, has been shaped by--the state's great, hopefully not late, mangrove forests.

"'Abandoned Coastal Defenses of Alabama' is a down-and-dirty guided tour through Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines, the retired guardians of Alabama's Gulf Coast."--Back cover

Abandoned Florida: Sunshine Sentinels is a stunning visual survey of Florida's historic coastal defenses--those sun-faded outposts of empire, crumbling now on shifting sands near the end of the beach. Discover the past and present of conquest and defense in the Sunshine State, documented in 140 images of gritty ruin and glorious restoration--ranging from the coquina confines of Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine to the towering casemates of far-flung Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas; from the shattered hulk of Fort Pickens in Pensacola to the cracked concrete batteries of Fort Dade in Tampa Bay; from the carefree garden spot of West Martello Tower in Key West to the paranoiac isolation of nuclear-powered HM-69 Nike Missile Base deep in the Everglades. Author Thomas Kenning delivers a vivid account of Florida's past that spans centuries, deftly blending history and urban exploration on a guided tour through Florida's many moments in the sun--from Spanish foothold to Indian removal, and Civil War blockade to Cold War flashpoint.