Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida (review)

Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams is the thirty-sixth monograph published in The Florida History and Culture Series, which is edited by Raymond Arsenault and Gary Mormino. Earlier volumes focused on places (titles include The Everglades, Casadaga, Miami, Jacksonville, and The Florida Resort Hotels), politics (Claude Pepper and Ed Ball; Government in the Sunshine State: Florida since Statehood; and Politics and Growth in Twentieth-Century Tampa), pre-20th-century history (The Seminole Wars, The Proslavery Writings of Zephaniah Kingsley, and Pensacola during the Civil War), and the environment (Florida's Space Coast and In the Eye of Hurricane Andrew). Several works focus on specific segments of the population. In this category are two books on the Seminoles, several biographies, as well as Female Activists in Twentieth-Century Florida; Gladesmen: Gator Hunters, Moonshiners, and Skiffers; Florida's Farmworkers in the Twenty-first Century; Hitler's Soldiers in the Sunshine State; and The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan.

Gary Mormino's sprightly and informative account ably treats many of these topics. Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams weaves demographic, social, cultural, environmental, political and economic themes into an overarching thesis. The narrative asserts that Florida changed more since 1940 than during the state's first four centuries. "Florida remains a state of enchanted reality and shattered dreams, of second chances and the trifecta at Gulfstream," asserts Mormino. "Florida held no monopoly on American dreamstates, but unlike in sunny rivals Hawaii and California, fantasies could be validated in Florida on the cheap" (p. 3).

Demography shaped the state's destiny. Florida was the least populous state on the eve of World War II; its inhabitants were predominantly white, southern-born, and Protestant. Today, boasting the fourth largest population in the nation, the state claims the country's highest percentage of men and women over sixty-five, most of whom came from the northeast or Midwest to retire or at least to spend the winter. Recently, for every senior citizen who stays, one leaves to take advantage of tax breaks and opportunities elsewhere in the south or in the west. Still, Florida's median age (38.7), which is exceeded only by West Virginia's, makes the Sunshine State a bellwether—for better and for worse—for our individual and collective aging selves. Successive waves of elders, varying ethnically and financially, have demanded an ever diverse range of goods, housing (the condo, a Roman invention, became popular first in postwar Florida), food, services, jobs, and amenities. At the same time generational tensions arise, stereotypes abound. Mormino predicts that "retirement in Florida may become as unfashionable as it was once stylish" (p. 147).

Besides their appeal to older Americans, Florida's beaches and economy lured increasing numbers of tourists, who considered a Florida vacation "a democratic right and a republican virtue" (p. 77). Not all sojourners were consumers of leisure: Spanish-speaking migrants settled in Florida as well as those seeking employment in Disneyworld, the defense industry, and agriculture. The Hispanic and Latino constituencies in Miami-Dade county now exceed 56%, transforming an enclave once known for grand hotels catering to WASPs (and, in certain areas, Jews). But Mormino evenhandedly notes the downsides: twice as many Floridians between the ages of five and nineteen than senior citizens live below the poverty line. Median income, per capital spending on education fell during the 1990s; poverty rates and the income disparity between rich and poor rose.

"Florida's great conundrum challenges wizards and mortals: how to balance a dreamscape that drew so many tourists and residents to pristine beaches and an unhurried lifestyle with everyday necessities to sustain millions of people?" (p. 229). Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams addresses this paradox by surveying major sectors of the economy. The opening of Walt Disney World in 1971 serves as the watershed, chronologically and conceptually, of the book. Roads, fast-food chains, and hotels changed the landscape; employment...