The Swamp Peddlers
How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream
By Jason Vuic

Approx. 272 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 26 halftones, 4 maps, notes, index
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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-6333-3
Published: June 2021 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-6315-9
Published: June 2021
Paperback Available June 2021, but pre-order your copy today!
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As Jason Vuic recounts in this raucous history, these communities allowed generations of northerners to move to Florida cheaply, but at a price: high-pressure sales tactics begat fraud; poor urban planning begat sprawl; developers cleared forests, drained wetlands, and built thousands of miles of roads in grid-like subdivisions, which, fifty years later, played an inordinate role in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.
About the Author
Jason Vuic is the author of The Yucks!: Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History and The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History.
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Reviews
"A marvelously written, dramatic account of the dark side of real estate development in Florida. Vuic's chronicle is engrossing, moving, and full of dark humor."--David Farber, author of Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed
"An excellent history of the interstate land sales industry--well researched, thorough in coverage, and written with compelling style."--Hubert B. Stroud, author of The Promise of Paradise: Recreational and Retirement Communities in the United States since 1950
"Jason Vuic's The Swamp Peddlers is a skillful and entertaining recreation of a colorful era of unscrupulous Florida land sales. It brings to life an astonishing rogues gallery of crooks and hustlers, each one of them a Florida Man seemingly sprung from the pages of a Carl Hiaasen thriller. This book's insights into what happened back then go a long way toward explaining what has made Florida such a mess today."--Craig Pittman, author of Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther
"Jason Vuic's book crackles with colorful characters who bought land by the acre and sold it by the foot to Americans in search of second acts and the Florida Dream. The Swamp Peddlers provides a cautionary tale: actions have profound consequences. What will our grandchildren think of our hubris?"--Gary R. Mormino, author of Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida