With an eye for the illogical and a flair for the irreverent, journalist Mark Lane aims his sharp wit at one of the most intriguing duties of the Florida legislature—signing state symbols into law. In Roaring Reptiles, Bountiful Citrus, and Neon Pies, he spotlights nineteen things that have been proposed and/or appointed to officially define Florida.

Immigrants make up the largest proportion of federal prisoners in the United States, incarcerated in a vast network of more than two hundred detention facilities. This book investigates when detention became a centerpiece of U.S. immigration policy. Detain and Punish reveals why the practice was reinstituted in 1981 after being halted for several decades and how the system expanded to become the world’s largest immigration detention regime.   

Contributors to this collection consider the multiplicity and instability of medieval French literary identity, arguing that it is fluid and represented in many different ways. Inherently unstable, identity is created, re-created, adopted, refused, imposed, and self-imposed. Additionally, taken together the essays posit that an individual may identify with a group, existing within it, and yet remain foreign to it.

The troubled chain of events involving Captain Kidd’s capture of Quedagh Merchant and his eventual execution for piracy in 1701 are well known, but the exact location of the much sought-after ship remained a mystery for more than 300 years. In 2010, a team of underwater archaeologists confirmed that the sunken remains of Quedagh Merchant had finally been found off the coast of the Dominican Republic.

The decision to consolidate with surrounding Duval County began the transformation of this conservative, Deep South, backwater city into a prosperous, mainstream metropolis.