Cosmic Trails 2 Itinerary

FT. LAUDERDALE

The Rough Guide to Miami & South Florida is the definitive guide to the ever-emerging city of Miami and the hot and happening Southern Florida. The only guide to this region which has a dedicated full-length chapter on Fort Lauderdale, The Rough Guide to Miami & South Florida is fully updated, with expanded listings of restaurants, accommodation, and nightlife for all budgets, and everything from art museums to sun drenched beaches.

The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise: Washington Post reporter Grunwald brings the zeal of his profession—and the skill that won him a Society of Environmental Journalists Award in 2003—to this enthralling story of “the river of grass” that starry-eyed social engineers and greedy developers have diverted, drained and exploited for more than a century. In 1838, fewer than 50 white people lived in south Florida, and the Everglades was seen as a vast and useless bog. By the turn of this century, more than seven million people lived there (and 40 million tourists visited annually). Escalating demands of new residents after WWII were sapping the Everglades of its water and decimating the shrinking swamp’s wildlife. But in a remarkable political and environmental turnaround, chronicled here with a Washington insider’s savvy, Republicans and Democrats came together in 2000 to launch the largest ecosystem restoration project in America’s history. This detailed account doesn't shortchange the environmental story — including an account of the senseless fowl hunts that provoked abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1877 broadside “Protect the Birds.” But Grunwald’s emphasis on the role politics played in first despoiling and now reclaiming the Everglades gives this important book remarkable heft.

The New History of Florida: Written to observe the sesquicentennial of statehood, this is a comprehensive history of the state of Florida. The book contains 22 chapters, in which the authors present political, economic, military and religious information, as well as social history and personal experiences.

Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe: When the conquistadors arrived in Florida as many as 350,000 native Americans lived there. Two and a half centuries later, Florida’s Indians were gone. This text focuses on these native peoples and their lives, and attempts to explain what happened to them.
 

THE BAHAMAS

Fodor’s Caribbean 2009

A–Z of Bahamas Heritage: Designed as a lively encyclopedia, this includes all the elements that constitute the heritage of modern Bahamians: historical, geographical, economic, political, social and cultural. Key events, institutions, customs and personalities are not just described but evaluated. Compiled by the premier historian of The Bahamas and four years in the making, this sparkling reference book is the distillation of research and analysis spread over half a century.
 

THE CARIBBEAN

A Brief History of the Caribbean: From the Arawak and Carib to the Present: This comprehensive volume takes the reader and student through more than five hundred years of Caribbean history, beginning with Columbus’s arrival in the Bahamas in 1492. A Brief History of the Caribbean traces the people and events that have marked this constantly shifting region, encompassing everything from economic booms and busts to epidemics, wars, and revolutions, and bringing to life such important figures as Sir Francis Drake, Blackbeard, Toussaint Louverture, Fidel Castro, the Duvaliers, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

A Continent of Islands: Searching For the Caribbean Destiny: A penetrating analysis of the social, political, sexual, and cultural worlds that exist behind the four-color Caribbean travel posters. Kurlansky, who reports on the Caribbean for The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, etc., has wide-ranging interests. Here, he discusses such diverse (and unexpected) aspects of his subject as the politics of hurricanes — how island leaders and their rivals take advantage of natural disasters to further their aims; the effects of AIDS on sexual practices throughout the region — the sections on Castro’s handling of the AIDS emergency are particularly engrossing; and the impact of American Fundamentalist proselytizing on traditional West Indian religious groups. One of Kurlansky’s major themes is the danger inherent in a tourism-based island economy.
 

THE TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS

Fodor’s In Focus Turks & Caicos Islands

A History of the Turks & Caicos Islands: The Turks and Caicos Islands is an archipelago of half a dozen populated islands and numerous other islets and cays located just to the south of the Bahamas chain of islands. One of the few remaining British Overseas Territories, its history is a patchwork of indigenous settlement, alleged first point of New World contact by Christopher Columbus, colonial rule, the slavery era, and constitutional multi-party government. A History of the Turks & Caicos Islands aims to examine the nature of all these, and other aspects of the Turks and Caicos identity. The book is divided into three parts: The Environment and Natural Resources of the Turks and Caicos Islands; Past Social and Political History of the Turks and Caicos Islands; and, The Contemporary Social and Political History of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Birds of the West Indies (Princeton Field Guides): Fully illustrated, easy to use, and completely up-to-date, Birds of the West Indies is the only field guide that covers all of the bird species known to occur in the region—including migrants and infrequently occurring forms. Each species is represented by a full description that includes identification field marks, status and range, habitat, and voice. A map showing the bird’s distribution accompanies many species accounts, and plumages of all species are depicted in ninety-three beautifully rendered color plates.
 

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

Insight Guide Puerto Rico

The Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History: A pleasure to read ... Each page provides a fresh glimpse into the unfolding story of a people. The book captures the human and personal component of ... sweeping historical changes.

The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus: A noted archaeologist and anthropologist tells the story of the Tainos of the northern Caribbean islands, from their ancestry on the South American continent to their rapid decline after contact with the Spanish explorers.

My Music Is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York Communities, 1917–1940: Puerto Rican music in New York is given center stage in Ruth Glasser’s original and lucid study. Exploring the relationship between the social history and forms of cultural expression of Puerto Ricans, she focuses on the years between the two world wars. Through recorded songs and live performances, Puerto Rican musicians were important representatives for the national consciousness of their compatriots on both sides of the ocean. Yet they also played with African-American and white jazz bands, Filipino or Italian-American orchestras, and with other Latinos. Glasser ... demonstrates the complexities of cultural nationalism and cultural authenticity within the very practical realm of commercial music. Illuminating a neglected epoch of Puerto Rican life in America, Glasser shows how ethnic groups settling in the United States had choices that extended beyond either maintenance of their homeland traditions or assimilation into the dominant culture. Her knowledge of musical styles and performance enriches her analysis, and a discography offers a helpful addition to the text.

Contact (the movie): The opening and closing moments of Robert Zemeckis’s Contact ... is an expression of the heroine’s lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. Based on Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The Right Stuff. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable—Contact is all of these things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation, but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contact deserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio filmmaking on a personal scale.

Goldeneye (the movie): James Bond teams up with the lone survivor of a destroyed Russian research center to stop the hijacking of a nuclear space weapon by a fellow agent believed to be dead.

A Continent of Islands: Searching For The Caribbean Destiny: Journalist Kurlansky has packed a lot of information in a relatively slim book. Readers who are familiar with one but not all of the Caribbean nations covered will find no errors in his facts and learn a great deal. He has designed his book’s format to cover cultural topics, comparing and contrasting countries rather than plodding from country to country. He discusses various topics: AIDS; the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s landing; the African roots of voodoo, arara, santeria, and shango; and the status of women.

A Guide to the Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands: This is a revised edition of a widely praised guide to the birds of the largest of the Caribbean islands and the neighboring Virgin Islands. It includes detailed accounts of all 284 well-documented species known to occur in the region, 273 being illustrated. The book also contains specific sections entitled “Biogeography” and “Conservation” to foster an appreciation of the uniqueness of the region’s wildlife and to develop an awareness of local conservation issues. The section “Places to Bird” will help make the stay of short-term visitors more productive. The book also substantially updates the data on avian distribution and abundance in the region covering records through November 1988. From reviews of the first edition: “This well-illustrated volume is a must for any student of birds visiting Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands.”
 

ST. MAARTIN

Fodor’s In Focus St. Maarten, St. Barths & Anguilla