Here is a taste of Florida history with a flavor for everyone. Meet the state's mobsters and visionaries, two-buck bettors and millionares, sportsmen and daredevils, warriors and storytellers, movie stars and binder boys. Sooner or later they all show up here, the dreamers, the schemers, and the scalawags who have made Florida a fascinating place to live and read about.

In this first volume of a continuing series on the state's history, McIver tells the Florida story through the lives and loves, the deeds and misdeeds of the colorful and often outrageous characters who called Florida home.