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The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider's History of the Florida-Alabama Coast Paperback – March 1, 2013
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The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera traces the development of the Florida-Alabama coast as a tourist destination from the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was sparsely populated with “small fishing villages,” through to the tragic and devastating BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.
Harvey H. Jackson III focuses on the stretch of coast from Mobile Bay and Gulf Shores, Alabama, east to Panama City, Florida―an area known as the “Redneck Riviera.” Jackson explores the rise of this area as a vacation destination for the lower South’s middle- and working-class families following World War II, the building boom of the 1950s and 1960s, and the emergence of the Spring Break “season.” From the late sixties through 1979, severe hurricanes destroyed many small motels, cafes, bars, and early cottages that gave the small beach towns their essential character. A second building boom ensued in the 1980s dominated by high-rise condominiums and large resort hotels. Jackson traces the tensions surrounding the gentrification of the late 1980s and 1990s and the collapse of the housing market in 2008. While his major focus is on the social, cultural, and economic development, he also documents the environmental and financial impacts of natural disasters and the politics of beach access and dune and sea turtle protection.
The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera is the culmination of sixteen years of research drawn from local newspapers, interviews, documentaries, community histories, and several scholarly studies that have addressed parts of this region’s history. From his 1950s-built family vacation cottage in Seagrove Beach, Florida, and on frequent trips to the Alabama coast, Jackson witnessed the changes that have come to the area and has recorded them in a personal, in-depth look at the history and culture of the coast.
A Friends Fund Publication.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity of Georgia Press
- Publication dateMarch 1, 2013
- Dimensions6 x 0.79 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100820345318
- ISBN-13978-0820345314
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Hardy Jackson writes about the Redneck Riviera with an insight and love that makes you want to travel back in time and stick your toes in the sands of its history. He makes you want to splash in the water when it was still clear, and sway in a hammock before condominiums eclipsed the sky. He makes you want to shake hands with the pirates and reprobates who once roamed here, in a time when it was apparently perfectly legal to shoot your ex-wife as long as you warned her not to come within shooting range. This is more than a history of a place and its brushes with disaster―the BP spill―and its changing social landscape. It is a story of a coast and a man's relationship with it. Those of us who have stared into that blue-green water have waited on this book for a long time.
-- Rick Bragg ― author of The Prince of FrogtownThis is a splendid social history, and Hardy Jackson, a native son of the coastal South, was born to write it. His witty prose combines the rigor of the trained scholar, the sharp eye of a journalist, and the unsentimental affection of a skilled memoirist. The result is the best guide yet to a geographic region that is also a cultural state of mind. I had as much fun reading it as I had on my first trip to Panama City Beach circa 1948.
-- Howell Raines ― author of My Soul Is RestedHarvey Jackson’s Redneck Riviera is pure delight. From the Gilded Age resort hotels and the first mom 'n' pop motels, to Spring Break, mullet-tossing contests, and the 2010 Gulf oil spill, Jackson chronicles the booms and busts that have shaped his beloved Gulf Coast. He has the keen detachment of a historian and the passion of someone who cares deeply about sand dunes and honky-tonk bars.
-- Gary R. Mormino ― Frank E. Duckwall professor of Florida history, University of South Florida St. PetersburgEven if you're not a redneck, you will want to go to the Alabama coastline when you read Harvey H. Jacksons III's new book, The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera. . . . If there was ever a person that could tell the personal and historical story of the Redneck Riviera, it's Jackson, Eminent Scholar in History at Jacksonville State University.
-- Theresa Shadrix ― Jacksonville NewsHardy Jackson brings to this job all the right tools. . . . [H]e can personalize history, narrate history in a highly readable fashion and commit sociology in the best possible way, from personal experience and keen observation. . . . It is all here. Some chapters generate nostalgia, some anger, fear and loathing. All chapters can educate us and make readers think about what they value most.
-- Don Noble ― Alabama Public RadioReared in Clarke County, Ala., chasing 'submarines and alligators' along the Alabama River and whiling summers away on the Florida Panhandle, Jackson is as far from a tweedy academic as it is possible to imagine. He looks good in shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops, glories in offshore fishing, and loves the Flora-Bama with a passion to match that of any bubba. And, man, can he write. If after finishing this beer-soaked and sand-whipped tour de force you don't find yourself heading to the beach, check your pulse.
-- John Sledge ― Mobile Press-RegisterWhether or not you have an attachment to the Gulf Coast, you'll find much that is interesting and entertaining in The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera. . . . Mr. Jackson's personal perspective enhances rather than interferes with his analysis, and his lucid, often pithy writing makes this book an engaging read.
-- Ray Hartwell ― Washington TimesThe most endangered species native to Florida's Panhandle and Alabama's Gulf Coast might just be the redneck. . . . The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera is a fun romp through a place that has long been dedicated to fun but it also dips its toes into the cultural conflicts the region has experienced―a bit history, a bit social commentary and a good read.
-- Susannah Nesmith ― Miami HeraldReview
Hardy Jackson writes about the Redneck Riviera with an insight and love that makes you want to travel back in time and stick your toes in the sands of its history. He makes you want to splash in the water when it was still clear, and sway in a hammock before condominiums eclipsed the sky. He makes you want to shake hands with the pirates and reprobates who once roamed here, in a time when it was apparently perfectly legal to shoot your ex-wife as long as you warned her not to come within shooting range. This is more than a history of a place and its brushes with disaster-the BP spill-and its changing social landscape. It is a story of a coast and a man's relationship with it. Those of us who have stared into that blue-green water have waited on this book for a long time.
This is a splendid social history, and Hardy Jackson, a native son of the coastal South, was born to write it. His witty prose combines the rigor of the trained scholar, the sharp eye of a journalist, and the unsentimental affection of a skilled memoirist. The result is the best guide yet to a geographic region that is also a cultural state of mind. I had as much fun reading it as I had on my first trip to Panama City Beach circa 1948.
Harvey Jackson's Redneck Riviera is pure delight. From the Gilded Age resort hotels and the first mom 'n' pop motels, to Spring Break, mullet-tossing contests, and the 2010 Gulf oil spill, Jackson chronicles the booms and busts that have shaped his beloved Gulf Coast. He has the keen detachment of a historian and the passion of someone who cares deeply about sand dunes and honky-tonk bars.
Even if you're not a redneck, you will want to go to the Alabama coastline when you read Harvey H. Jacksons III's new book, The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera. . . . If there was ever a person that could tell the personal and historical story of the Redneck Riviera, it's Jackson, Eminent Scholar in History at Jacksonville State University.
Hardy Jackson brings to this job all the right tools. . . . [H]e can personalize history, narrate history in a highly readable fashion and commit sociology in the best possible way, from personal experience and keen observation. . . . It is all here. Some chapters generate nostalgia, some anger, fear and loathing. All chapters can educate us and make readers think about what they value most.
Reared in Clarke County, Ala., chasing 'submarines and alligators' along the Alabama River and whiling summers away on the Florida Panhandle, Jackson is as far from a tweedy academic as it is possible to imagine. He looks good in shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops, glories in offshore fishing, and loves the Flora-Bama with a passion to match that of any bubba. And, man, can he write. If after finishing this beer-soaked and sand-whipped tour de force you don't find yourself heading to the beach, check your pulse.
Whether or not you have an attachment to the Gulf Coast, you'll find much that is interesting and entertaining in The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera. . . . Mr. Jackson's personal perspective enhances rather than interferes with his analysis, and his lucid, often pithy writing makes this book an engaging read.
The most endangered species native to Florida's Panhandle and Alabama's Gulf Coast might just be the redneck. . . . The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera is a fun romp through a place that has long been dedicated to fun but it also dips its toes into the cultural conflicts the region has experienced-a bit history, a bit social commentary and a good read.
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Product details
- Publisher : University of Georgia Press; First Edition (March 1, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0820345318
- ISBN-13 : 978-0820345314
- Item Weight : 11.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.79 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #159,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #51 in Historical Geography
- #1,806 in U.S. State & Local History
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fortunes of that part of the panhandle through happy and hard times (not mutually exclusive) for many decades. The reader can delight in descriptions of upcountry vacationers, hurricanes, boom-then-bust developers, municipal posturings, state spats, environmental issues, genuinely phony roadhouses, and striving parvenus. As a well-trained historian, Jackson knows how to find and test information, and, more importantly, how to set it in context. This book may provide ideas for satire, but it isn't one. Jackson holds back from snap judgments and preachments, and his writings convey an amusement, even an affection, for a place he's earned the right to criticize. And when he does, it sticks. The result is an entertaining, engaging history, useful beyond its subject as an example of what the public needs more of. The University of Georgia Press is to be thanked for publishing such a book. Historians are famous for being dull and ponderous and rarely conveying humility. Hardy Jackson can hold his own with those heavyweight academics, but, what the hell, he doesn't need to. Besides, the sun is shining down there. The beer and the sweet tea are cold. The children are playing in the sand while the wife is reading Southern Living and Grandma is shelling butterbeans. And the dad, well, he's startin' to feel lazy as hell, and projecting, and remembering.
Written with wit, clarity and accuracy, the book takes you back to all those special places which mostly are gone now. It tickles your memories to the point you almost feel the soft breeze and taste the salty air of the Gulf once again. It also documnets the economic and natural disasters of the area, and how it always recovered, from the 1930's right on up to the BP oil spill.
It's about how the newly arrived, the "raffish Rotarians, pirates with cash register eyeballs and hard-handed matrons" do not desire anyone to come there anymore and "run amok, act noxious and make offensive noises."
In 1960 I could do all those things, sleep on the beach and only be awakened in the morning by the bugs. Try that today and you'll be sleeping somewhere much less desirable than the beach.
For all the changes, good and bad, the author lets us know there are a few remnants of redneckery still hanging on down there. My favorite is still right there on the AL and Fl state line, the Florabama Bar, where they still toss mullets, play trashy white music, serve up refreshments, and where the ladies still leave their bras hanging from the rafters.




