Jason Vuic is an author and historian who lives in Fort Worth Texas but grew up in Punta Gorda so many of his books delve into Florida history and culture. His first book was actually on an infamous automobile: "The Yugo: the Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History" was published in 2010 and received wide acclaim and media attention. He followed it up with the 2016 book "The Yuck! Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History" - it tells the story of "the hapless, hilarious, and hopelessly winless 1976–1977 Tampa Bay Buccaneers."
We talked with Jason in 2021 after he published "The Swamp Peddlers: How lot sellers, land scammers, and retirees built modern Florida and transformed the American Dream" - it tells the story of Florida's land and lot boom beginning in the 1950s and the story of how cities like Port Charlotte, Cape Coral, and Marco Island came to be.
His brand new book tells two seemingly unconnected yet strangely overlapping stories that unfolded in the small, rural town of Arcadia in DeSoto County beginning in the 1960s that come together in the 1980s.
"A Town Without Pity: Aids, race and resistance in Florida’s Deep South" explores the wrongful conviction and long incarceration of a migrant farmworker named James Richardson, and the town's response to three young boys who were infected with the HIV virus via blood transfusions in the mid 80s.
You can hear our 2021 conversation with Vuic about his book Swamp Peddlers here.
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