The Florida Keys: A History & Guide Tenth Edition

This 10th edition is Joy's last. In an Afterword written in 2003 and laden with sadness and disappointment, she says, that the commodification of Key West and the total takeover of the Keys by the tourist mongers, have killed it for her. The book, however, remains as good a guidebook as they get. It's ironic that its demise is an unfortunate consequence of the success it helped promote.

Key West, the only city in the continental US that NEVER has frost, offers an offbeat combination of rednecks, bohemians, fishermen, Cubans, gays, retirees and artists in a delightfully laid-back setting once you get off the bustling tourist Mecca, Duvall Street. (Both Hemingway and Tennessee Williams had homes in Key West. It's now a popular residence for country singers.) In this delightful book, writer/Key West resident Joy Williams has provided both a work of literature and an extremely practical tour guide, making it ideal for both the active tourist escaping winter and the armchair traveler curled up by the fireplace. In addition to the colorful history of the keys (with Williams' own humorous commentary), the book contains practical information on what to see, what to do, where to eat, and where to stay. Williams' descriptions of the local businesses provide some of the book's zaniest observations. (She points out the most interesting items to be found in the stores, from tourist traps to boutiques to convenience grocers.) I've been to Key West four times now and I always carry this book with me. Although the book focuses on Key West, it does give information all the other major keys, as well as the Dry Tortugas. This book is guaranteed to enhance your Key West experience. Five stars!

She really gives us her unvarnished, informed opinion, and as a result my "expectations have been managed." Along with quite a bit of scathingly critical comments, some of which could be the subject of libel suits it would seem to me (did the publisher's attorneys vet this book?), she tells us about the places and activities she can honestly recommend.I have another guide written by a local (can't remember her name, but she wrote "Postcards from Paradise"), and although not a chamber of commerce booster book, it is nevertheless more positive than this book. For example, a particular park is described as a littered hangout for druggies and anonymous homosexual trysts by Williams, but given a strong recommendation by the other writer. What is the truth?--I don't know, but I feel better having a range of opinions rather than the tourist bureau party line. And Williams's book is entertaining in itself, even if you're not going there, mixing history and the local antics of the year-round denizens in with the reviews of hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions.

This book is a well written book first, funny, insightful and at times critical, and then its a guide book. If you only take one book to the Keys take this! You'll learn more about this fascinating part of the world than you could imagine, history, geography, flaura and fauna - but most of all people - from the lawyer, counsellor B who jumped off the tower of the Holiday Inn in Key West, and henceforth remembered as No Bungee B to the many writers who have lived there: Hemingway, tennessee Williams, etc. Its my all time favourite:- and I live in England!!

Joy Williams is a great fiction writer, someone who sees our culture's absurdities with heart intact. She sees the Keys the same way.The author used to live in the Keys at least part of the year. She might still. This guide is how a very smart local would see it, and is thus invaluable. It's not a complete listing of every restaurant and every hotel. It's a select listing of just the ones you need bother with and a few references to the ones you need skip. It's a fabulously succinct history and cultural guide. Some of the sentences will make you laugh out loud. As Joy points out, the future of the Keys is bleak. They're nothing but a bunch of nasty rocks hanging in a beautiful sea anyway. There's not long until builders have squeezed somthing onto every nothing. And as the Everglades die much of the ocean around the Keys does too. Since I've been going there much of the reef has died and remains a bunch of fossilized coral lying on the bottom like scattered bones (pollution and careless boating and scuba diving are much to blame). She's just right when she says that the opening of Cuba would make the Keys a mere depot. Might be the best thing that ever happened to Key West. There would be fewer T-shirt shops perhaps. And how in the heck do they keep building huge hotels in places that used to be water? Nevertheless, there's no place like it. You should take this book with you when you go.