Craig Pittman (writer)

Craig Pittman is an American journalist and author of books mostly about Florida. He is a reporter and columnist for the Tampa Bay Times.[1] In 2020 the Florida Heritage Book Festival honored Pittman as a "Living Legend".[2]

Not to be confused with Craig Pittman (wrestler).

Books
  • Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss (co-written with Matthew Waite) (2009)
  • Manatee Insanity: Inside the War Over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species (2010)
  • The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal, and the World's Most Beautiful Orchid (2012)
  • Oh, Florida! How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country (2016)
  • Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther (2020)

The Scent of Scandal

This non-fiction book, which focuses on a Florida court case involving charges of orchid smuggling, is the only book ever classified as "True Crime/Gardening."

Oh, Florida!

According to The New York Times, Pittman's 2016 book, Oh, Florida! How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country, is a "compulsively readable," native son's view of the state he "obviously loves," in which he makes a persuasive case that Florida has an outsize influence on the national culture.[1] The book grew out of a series of articles Pittman wrote for Slate (magazine).[3] The book, which covers such topics as driving in Florida, gambling in Florida, and sin and salvation in Florida, contains one of the earliest published uses of the phrase "Drainpipe of America." In February 2017 it won the Florida Book Award gold medal for Florida nonfiction.<http://floridabookawards.lib.fsu.edu/>

Cat Tale

Documents the decades-long rediscovery of the Florida panther, it's election to state animal, and conservationist attempts to protect it from inbreeding, pollution, hunting, loss of food, and habitat loss. It describes a controversy when the leading panther expert, Dr. David Maehr, covertly took money from wealthy donors and then wrote faulty science papers that would give developers the green light to "pave" over natural swamps and forests needed for panther habitat.

References
  1. Russell, Kent (July 19, 2016). "What Makes Florida So Weird? A Native Tries to Explain (book review)". New York Times. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
  2. https://www.tampabay.com/arts-entertainment/arts/books/2019/10/11/craig-pittman-becomes-a-florida-literary-legend/%3FoutputType%3Damp
  3. Handelman, Jay (31 July 2006). "'Oh, Florida!' explores how a weird state impacts the nation". Sarasota Herald Tribune. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
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