Product Overview
You just cover a lot of territory and you do it aggressively and you do it fairly and you dont play favorites and you dont take any prisoners. Its the old school of slash-and-burn metropolitan column writing. You just kick ass. Thats what you do. And thats what they pay you to do. --Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen is one of America's finest novelists. His newspaper column is another side of the same talent, examining with a corrosive writer's eye the outrageous carnival of Southern Florida. The inhabitants are all here: thieves, conmen, and hustlers, perfumed swine and oiled mannequins, legal swindlers and patriotic crooks, executioners and lap dancers, and yes, even an occasional hero. This is a splendid collection by a native son whose rage at the despoiling of Florida can only be relieved by dark laughter. --Pete Hamill
Readers who eagerly anticipate each new Carl Hiaasen novel will relish this selection of his Miami Herald columns, written with the same dark humor and satirical edge as Tourist Season, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, and the rest of Hiaasens brilliant and nationally acclaimed fiction. Known for evoking the disastrously flawed paradise of modern South Florida, Hiaasen proves in these columns that facts can indeed be stranger than the fiction they inspire.
Beginning with Welcome to South Florida, a chapter introducing such everyday events as animal sacrifice, riots at the beach, and a shootout over limes at the supermarket, this collection organizes over 200 columns into 18 chapters, chronicling the events and defining the issues that have kept the South Florida melting pot bubbling throughout the 80s and 90s. An introductory essay provides an overview of Hiaasens career and outlines his principal concerns as a journalist.
Since its inception in 1985, Hiaasens twice-weekly baseball-bat-to-the-forehead column has become enormously popular for its passionate conviction and willingness to confront powerful interests in pursuit of the public good. Amid the corruption and chaos of a city on the edge, Hiaasens pointblank honesty and clear articulation of whats right have secured him wide respect across the communitys many racial and ethnic divides as well as the admiration of his peers, who compare him to A. J. Leibling, I. F. Stone, and H. L. Mencken.
In addition to South Florida color and world-class journalism, readers of Kick Ass will find one of Floridas staunchest defenders in action, and theyll take great pleasure in watching him work.
Bestselling author Carl Hiaasen has written Tourist Season, Strip Tease, Sick Puppy, Skinny Dip, and many other novels that have helped define Florida noir. He is also the author of three popular books for young readers, Hoot, Flush, and most recently, Scat. His nonfiction includes Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World and Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport. A Florida native and lifelong resident, Hiaasen still writes regularly for the Miami Herald, where he has worked for 33 years and where these columns first appeared. Diane Stevenson teaches research writing in the psychology department at the University of Florida.
