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James David Wright (1947–2019)

Welcome to The Wright Stuff, a web page devoted to the books I have written, am writing, or may write in the future. The book projects are in three categories: Recently Published, In Press, and Work in Progress. Scroll through the categories to read book summaries, publishers and publication dates, current status, and related material. You can also learn more about me personally on the About page and read (and respond to) miscellaneous essays on all sorts of topics at my Blog.

My most exciting current project is A Florida State of Mind: An Unnatural History of our Weirdest State, now available from Thomas Dunne Books. See an excerpt at my Blog.

Florida is a state where Outback Steakhouse frequently ranks as the number one restaurant in the local Zagat survey, where college football and stock car racing are nearly as important as God, where 15 acres of habitat for storks, ibises and sand hill cranes were sacrificed to build Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede, a local tourist attraction that opened in 2003, closed in 2008, and was demolished in 2012 to make way for expansion of a nearby outlet discount mall. It is a state where traffic congestion is consistently rated as the leading threat to the quality of life; whose cities are consistently rated the least safe in America for bicyclers and pedestrians; that leads the nation in annual shark attacks and where a dozen or so people are bitten by alligators every year. Yet despite it all, it is also a state that draws a hundred million annual visitors and has become the world’s number one tourist destination. In short, a state of contradictions, humor, tragedy — America’s weirdest state!