Florida Press

07/03/2024

Grab a free eBook perfect for your next beach read. In the spirit of summer, these books dive into the topic of water. They invite readers to explore our oceans and waterways and the people and creatures that depend on them through subjects including the beloved bottlenose dolphin, Florida’s fresh water crisis, fishing guides and stories from bygone eras, and investigations of natural wonders like undersea caves and barrier reefs.

You can enjoy the digital versions of these books on eReaders such as Kobo, Nook, Apple Books, and Kindle through July 31.

To view the list of free eBooks, visit the link below. We hope you enjoy these free reads.

Looking for a good summer read? We are making ten eBooks available for free during the month of July. In the spirit of summer, these books are among the many titles published by University Press of…

06/26/2024

Even as Pride Month comes to an end, the tales of love, courage, and resilience continue to inspire us all year long. Celebrate with our Books for Pride Month reading list, featuring powerful LGBTQ+ voices and experiences. View the link below to explore these remarkable stories.

https://floridapress.blog/2023/06/01/books-for-pride-month-2023/

06/25/2024

Say hello to a new edition of FLORIDA TRAIL HIKES! This guide to the best scenic day hikes and overnight trips along the state-spanning Florida Trail helps readers of all backgrounds and experience levels plan an adventure exploring natural Florida.

“The Florida National Scenic Trail is a one-of-a-kind hiking experience. Flat and semitropical, free of snow in the winter months, the trail provides nature’s response to development throughout the…

06/20/2024

Don't miss our June newsletter! Highlights this month include the newly-released Fall 2024 catalog, recommended reads for Juneteenth and Pride Month, our time at the AUPresses annual meeting, and more.

Read it here: https://conta.cc/4c9wPmS

Subscribe for our monthly e-newsletters here: upress.ufl.edu/subscribe

06/19/2024

Today is , an annual celebration in commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, the day Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to declare freedom for enslaved people in the state—freedom that had been granted in the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier.

Today is a great day for Florida readers to explore the history of slavery, emancipation, segregation, and civil rights activism in our own state. Browse our suggested reading list of books on the Black history of Florida here: bit.ly/BlackHistoryFL

The newest book on our list is JAMES HUDSON: FORGOTTEN FORERUNNER IN THE CRUSADE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS by Larry Omar Rivers. This book tells the story of a brilliant philosopher, Florida A&M University professor, activist, and religious leader and his influence on the rise of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. This book will be available in August 2024.

Other featured titles include DEMOCRACY ABROAD, LYNCHING AT HOME: RACIAL VIOLENCE IN FLORIDA by Dr. Tameka Bradley Hobbs; MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE THE PAN-AFRICANIST by Ashley Robertson Preston; and TO TELL A BLACK STORY OF MIAMI by Tatiana D. McInnis.

You can order these books on our website (upress.ufl.edu) or from your local bookseller.

06/18/2024

Exploring works of science fiction originating from Spanish-speaking parts of the Caribbean and their diasporas, TROPICAL TIME MACHINES shows how writers, filmmakers, musicians, and artists are using the language of the genre to comment on the region’s history and present-day realities.

“A necessary, groundbreaking book. A comprehensive map of contemporary science fiction in the Spanish Caribbean.”—Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, author of Utopía, distopía e ingravidez: reconfiguracion…

06/17/2024

Last week, three University Press of Florida staff members traveled to Montréal, Quebec, for the annual meeting of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses). The conference brought together mission-driven scholarly publishers from around the world for panels on best practices, case studies, and future directions in publishing; presentations by scholars and experts on topics relevant to the industry; and conversations among fellow publishing professionals on all aspects of the work we do in acquiring, producing, marketing, and distributing peer-reviewed books and journals.

Highlights included a pre-conference walking tour of Montréal’s Mile End district led by the local history group Mémoire du Mile End / Mile End Memories, the annual AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, sessions on community-based publishing models and bookselling in the US and Canada, a plenary on bibliodiversity in translation and publishing by the University of Cambridge's Charles Forsdick, and many discussions about AI and publishing that together constituted a major theme of the conference.

Thanks to the AUPresses staff and 2024 Annual Meeting Program Committee for an inspiring and informative gathering! Thanks also to Montréal host presses McGill-Queen's University Press and Concordia University Press. Our staff came away grateful for the opportunity to learn and collaborate and excited to share new ideas with colleagues back at our own press in Gainesville.


📷: Stephanye Hunter, Rachel Doll, Hunter Movalli

06/11/2024

MISSISSIPPIAN WOMEN highlights the vital role women played within the diverse societies of the Mississippian world, which spanned the present-day United States South to the Midwest before the seventeenth century. It shows how women were powerful farmers, economic decision-makers, spiritual leaders, and agents of social integration, with an approach directly informed by the powerful position of American Indian women within contemporary American Indian communities.

“An eye-opening dive into the lives, contributions, and power of Indigenous women through a myriad of archaeological methods.”—Christina Friberg, author of The Making of Mississippian Tradition “A …

06/04/2024

Our Fall & Winter 2024 season is live and we are excited to share it with you! Visit upress.ufl.edu/Fall2024 to check out our new books scheduled to be published next season.

The season starts off with two beautifully illustrated new books: MODERN CUBAN, a cookbook that reimagines classic recipes for today’s home chefs, and DRY TORTUGAS, a co-publication with Florida Humanities that captures the beauty of a unique ecological treasure through awe-inspiring photography.

More highlights from the season include a journey through Florida’s environmental wonders and unique human stories, a visual meditation on Miami’s vanishing mobile home communities, and an informative overview of the past and present of Florida’s freshwater springs.

We are also looking forward to publishing the memoir of Dedé Mirabal, which tells the true story that inspired Julia Alvarez’s IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES, in its first English translation; a study of Black prison writing in the nineteenth century; and an analysis of the social and political role of online video humor in Latin America.

Finally, a new interpretation of James Joyce’s notoriously complicated novel FINNEGANS WAKE illuminates the book through attention to the theme of guilt; a synthesis of archaeological research on healthcare and medicine shows how medical practices in the United States have evolved since the nineteenth century; and a new work of historical archaeology documents the diverse culture of Manila during a period of dramatic globalization.

Browse all titles in the season here: upress.ufl.edu/Fall2024

📚 You can preorder any of these books now with discount code FALL24, valid through June 30, and they will ship to you as they become available between September 2024 and February 2025.

📷 The catalog cover photo is by Catalina Ayubi-Byckovas, from MODERN CUBAN: A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH TO CLASSIC RECIPES by Ana Quincoces.

05/31/2024

Congratulations to UPF author and FIU alumna Kirsten Hines for being featured in Florida International University News! Check out her award-winning book WILD FLORIDA: AN ANIMAL ODYSSEY, full of stunning original pictures and moving essays about Florida wildlife, below.
https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813069814

Proud to be an FIU alumni! Wild Florida never would have happened without my Florida International University experience. Thank you for the foundation, and for today's feature!
https://news.fiu.edu/2024/alumna-explores-florida-wildlife-in-new-book

05/30/2024

As draws to a close, UPF is proud to spotlight YAMATO COLONY: THE PIONEERS WHO BROUGHT JAPAN TO FLORIDA. Ryusuke Kawai’s true story of an isolated Japanese farming settlement in south Florida (now the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens) sheds light on the state’s little-known Japanese-American heritage as well as immigrant bravery and resilience.

https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813068107

05/23/2024

CORPOREAL READINGS OF CUBAN LITERATURE AND ART examines how Cuban writers and artists have depicted racial, gender, and species differences throughout the past century. It discusses how their works have emphasized the shared materiality of bodies across diverse media, time periods, and ideologies.

“This beautifully written book blazes a new trail in studies of contemporary Cuban culture by considering the interrelations of aesthetics, ethics, and corporeality. Defying traditional myths of na…

05/22/2024

We were in Tallahassee last weekend at the Florida Historical Society Public History Forum. Read about the conference and browse our newest Florida history books on our blog.

We attended this year’s Florida Historical Society Public History Forum in Tallahassee from May 16 to 18, 2024. Although the meeting is over, our virtual booth is open through July …

05/21/2024

Happy Publication Day! EXPLORING ONTOLOGIES OF THE PRECONTACT AMERICAS is a new release from . This volume engages with social theory and considers diverse, non-Western worldviews to explore concepts of life and death in past societies of the Indigenous Americas.

“This volume exemplifies the broad relevance of modern bioarchaeology, with its strong grounding in social theory and invocation of diverse lines of evidence beyond human remains.”—Alexis Boutin, S…

05/17/2024

A review of PILOBOLUS: A STORY OF DANCE AND LIFE by Robert Pranzatelli in The Wall Street Journal!

“Pranzatelli captures the changes the troupe has undergone in the 50 years between its beginning as a countercultural phenomenon and its current state as an established part of dance history. . . . He shows us how dances come together. His keen analysis of such works as ‘Day Two’ and ‘Gnomen’ helps us see more deeply into their beauty, fostering a new appreciation for this pathbreaking company.”

Read the full review to learn more about the book and the dance theatre company PILOBOLUS:

The experimental dance troupe focused on athletic, gymnastic forms to create startling displays of what the human body can do.

05/17/2024

We are in Tallahassee today for the Florida Historical Society Public History Forum. If you are attending, stop by our table to chat with Carlynn Crosby and shop our books on Florida history.

05/15/2024

Our May newsletter is out! This month we're highlighting the opening of a new local Gainesville bookstore, discussions in Medieval Studies, and the Spring Sale before it ends.

Read it here: https://conta.cc/3WHoi5J

Want our monthly e-newsletters delivered to your inbox? Subscribe here: upress.ufl.edu/subscribe

05/14/2024

In AN INTRODUCTION TO JEAN BODEL, Lynn Ramey explores the life and works of Jean Bodel, a twelfth-century French poet, playwright, and epic writer. She delves into Bodel’s historical and cultural context while providing translations and summaries of works never published before in English.

“The medieval master of genre, twelfth-century poet Jean Bodel, finally gets the attention he deserves in this essential study. Ramey’s lucid discussion of the wide range of genres Bodel defined—fr…

05/13/2024

"When I look back at my nearly 40 years of public service to the people of Florida, my legacy is not the offices to which I was elected, but what I achieved while in those offices. . . . Of all those achievements, there are none more permanent and therefore significant than the land and water we conserved to protect Florida's environment, economy and quality of life."

Bob Graham wrote these words in a 2017 op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel titled "Protect Florida’s Legacy—Its Land and Waters." In memory of the former Florida governor and United States senator, who passed away last month, we are sharing this essay and another piece by Graham about his formative early years in South Florida. Both pieces are included in WRITING FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD: Essays from David R. Colburn and Senator Bob Graham, a collection edited by Steven Noll and published in 2022.

Visit our blog to read them:

Bob Graham, former Florida governor and United States senator, passed away last month. Graham was one of the most accomplished politicians in Florida’s history, having served for nearly four …

05/10/2024

This “Florida Then and Now” image is inspired by the new book TRACING FLORIDA JOURNEYS by Leslie Kemp Poole. Through writings from history, this book helps readers discover Florida’s unique places across time. 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 the perspective of today.

Cross Creek, a small community near Gainesville located on a strip of land between Orange Lake and Lochloosa Lake, was home to the writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings from 1928 until her death in 1953. Rawlings’s homestead, now a National Historic Landmark, has been restored and is currently maintained to look like it did when the writer lived here. These images show Rawlings’s home in 1965 and 2019.

Learn more about the history of this place in TRACING FLORIDA JOURNEYS, co-published with Florida Humanities and available here: upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813080475

Photo from 1965 courtesy of the State Archives of Florida. Photo from 2019 courtesy of Bruce Hunt.

05/09/2024

The International Congress on Medieval Studies is meeting this weekend, and we're sharing a Q&A with the editors of the New Perspectives on Medieval Literature book series. Read about the editors' thoughts on past and future titles in the series on our blog.

New Perspectives on Medieval Literature, a book series edited by Tison Pugh and R. Barton Palmer, offers compact, comprehensive, and up-to-date studies of important medieval authors and traditions …

05/07/2024

Learn more about how two medieval women, one real, one fictional, started the women’s movement from author Joan E. McRae on the 600th birthday of "La Belle Dame sans Mercy."

By Joan E. McRae, author of An Introduction to Literary Debate in Late Medieval France: From “Le Roman de la Rose” to “La Belle Dame sans Mercy.” This book is available at a…

05/02/2024

THE PUERTO RICO RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATION, a new book by Geoff G. Burrows, explores the history and impact of an important New Deal program. The PRRA improved living conditions across Puerto Rico in the wake of destructive hurricanes and the Great Depression while at the same time resulting in a strengthened colonial relationship between the island and the United States.

“Burrows’s pioneering and engaging study of the PRRA’s Engineering Division makes important contributions to understandings of the New Deal as imperial reform and of its relationship to Puerto Rica…

05/02/2024

Many thanks to The Lynx Books for inviting us to help celebrate your grand opening this past Sunday!

Our Press director Romi Gutierrez spoke with journalist and author Cynthia Barnett (THE SOUND OF THE SEA), who is a member of the University Press of Florida faculty editorial board, and historian and author Jack E. Davis (THE GULF), who is also coeditor of the book THE WILDER HEART OF FLORIDA and three other books with UPF, about book publishing from the perspective of a university press.

We were grateful for the opportunity to share a little bit about what we do with our local community. Our staff members enjoyed the many author readings throughout the day as well, including book presentations by Cynthia and Jack. Here’s to many more books, authors, and literary events at Gainesville’s newest independent bookstore!

05/01/2024

We were in Tallahassee last weekend at Word of South. Read about our time at and browse all our books in our spring sale, including our winners in this year’s Florida Book Awards.

We had a great time meeting so many of our readers at our booth at the Word of South Festival this weekend. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to browse our books and chat with us! Here ar…

04/30/2024

A foundational resource for both students and professionals, SPACE POLICY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY provides a comprehensive, accessible overview of major space policies in the United States and a framework through which to analyze them.

“First of its kind, a comprehensive introduction to US space policy using the tools of political science and policy analysis in an approachable way. With student interest in space skyrocketing, thi…

04/27/2024

If you’re in Tallahassee this weekend, find us at the Word of South festival in Cascades Park! Come check out a wide variety of our new books and bestsellers, including our winners in this year’s Florida Book Awards. You’ll also want to visit the other amazing vendors and catch some of the exciting author talks and music performances scheduled this year. It’s a beautiful weekend and a great event; don’t miss it!

04/25/2024

DECODING THE CODEX BORGIA by Susan Milbrath explores the rich symbolism of the Codex Borgia, a masterpiece of Precolumbian art dating to the fifteenth century. This book shows how the manuscript’s intricate and colorful imagery conveys complex ideas related to Mesoamerican myths and religion.

“Milbrath’s detailed study demonstrates that the scribes who made the Codex Borgia invested its pages with densely layered meanings and astronomical predictions based on careful observations, the c…

04/24/2024

We enjoyed our time at the Society for American Archaeology conference last weekend. Read about our time at and browse our newest archaeology titles on our blog.

We attended this year’s meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in New Orleans, Louisiana from April 17 to 21, 2024. Although the meeting is over, our virtual booth is open through Ju…

04/23/2024

SELLING VERO BEACH: SETTLER MYTHS IN THE LAND OF THE AÍS AND SEMINOLE, a new book by Kristalyn Marie Shefveland, explores how settlers from northern states created myths about the Indian River area on Florida’s Atlantic Coast. These settlers imported ideas about the region’s Indigenous peoples and rewrote its history to market the land to investors and tourists.

“A lively exploration of how dreamers and schemers constructed a mythical Florida past. Shefveland offers a compelling story of how Indigenous peoples were written out of Florida’s history by devel…