{"title":"Lu Vickers","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"breathing-underwater-book-lu-vickers-9781555839642","title":"Breathing Underwater","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49897082749201,"sku":"CIN1555839649G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53202767872273,"sku":"CIN1555839649A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1555839649.jpg?v=1751150192"},{"product_id":"weeki-wachee-city-of-mermaids-book-lu-vickers-9780813030418","title":"Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids","description":"In the postwar explosion of domestic tourism, Weeki Wachee Spring offered the quintessential vacation fantasy, a city of colorful mermaids in a natural crystal spring right off the West Coast highway in a sparsely inhabited 1947 Florida. Travelers headed south to playgrounds in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa found Weeki Wachee a tantalizing detour from the grueling two-lane road connecting vacation-land with the work-a-day world to the north. Vickers and Dionne show how that local novelty became a stellar international attraction. Weeki Wachee and its featured attraction, mermaids, combined the allure of pinup girls with the wholesome talents of variety entertainers to create a daily schedule of underwater acts ranging from eating bananas and performing ballet to staging underwater musicals. For nearly 60 years, these mermaids with their underwater talents have attracted crowds of vacationers, film crews, and celebrities. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as interviews with dozens of mermaids and other park employees, Vickers traces the park's rise to prominence. Combined with Dionne's arrangement of 250 photos, the resulting work shows what it was like to be a mermaid at Weeki Wachee in its heyday.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49940048707857,"sku":"CIN0813030412G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813030412.jpg?v=1765014919"},{"product_id":"remembering-paradise-park-book-lu-vickers-9780813061528","title":"Remembering Paradise Park","description":"Paradise Park was the \"\"colored only\"\" counterpart to Silver Springs, a central Florida tourist attraction famous for its crystal-clear water and glass bottom boats. From 1949 to 1969, boats passed each other on the Silver River - blacks on one side, whites on the other. Though the patrons of both parks shared the same river, they never crossed the invisible line in the water.  Full of vivid photographs, vintage advertisements, and interviews with employees and patrons, Remembering Paradise Park portrays a place of delight and leisure during the painful era of Jim Crow. Racial violence was at its height in Florida - the famous Groveland rape case happened right as Paradise Park opened - and many African Americans saw the park as a safe place for families. It was a popular vacation spot for the area's strong black community, which outnumbered the white community as early as the Civil War and had become one of the most cohesive and prosperous black populations in the South.  This book compares the park to other tourist destinations set aside for African Americans in the state and across the country. Though Silver Springs was Florida's only attraction to operate a parallel facility for African Americans, Paradise Park has been just a whisper in the story of Florida tourism until now.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50627531899153,"sku":"CIN0813061520VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51102099931409,"sku":"NIN9780813061528","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813061520.jpg?v=1763118872"},{"product_id":"weeki-wachee-mermaids-book-lu-vickers-9780813044309","title":"Weeki Wachee Mermaids","description":"In the postwar explosion of domestic tourism, Weeki Wachee spring offered the quintessential vacation fantasy, a city of colourful mermaids in a natural crystal spring right off the West Coast highway in a sparsely inhabited Florida. In those early days, the mermaids had to stand alongside the highway to flag travellers down, but once word of their charms got out, travellers headed south to playgrounds in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa found Weeki Wachee a tantalising detour from the gruelling two-lane road connecting vacationland with the work-a-day world to the north. Vickers shows how that local novelty became a stellar international attraction.      Founded in 1947 by Walton Hall Smith and Newt Perry, Weeki Wachee and its featured attraction, mermaids, combined the allure of pinup girls with the wholesome talents of variety entertainers to create a daily schedule of underwater acts ranging from eating bananas and performing ballet to staging underwater musicals. For nearly 60 years, these mermaids with their underwater talents have attracted crowds of vacationers, film crews, and celebrities. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as interviews with dozens of mermaids and other park employees, Vickers traces the park's rise to prominence. Brilliantly illustrated with 250 stunning photos, the resulting work shows what it was like to be a mermaid at Weeki Wachee in its heyday.       Weeki Wachee Mermaids also explores the enduring appeal of the attraction. Once people get past Weeki Wachee's once crumbling, recently restored exterior, they continue to be just as genuinely awed by the mermaids as Elvis was.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51102100979985,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51102101930257,"sku":"NIN9780813044309","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813044308.jpg?v=1763114533"},{"product_id":"cypress-gardens-america-s-tropical-wonderland-book-lu-vickers-9780813034997","title":"Cypress Gardens, America'S Tropical Wonderland","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhere America's wildest dreams came true\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"At Cypress Gardens--the original Florida theme park--movie stars, water-ski champs, and southern sweethearts created magic. More than anyone, even Walt Disney, Dick Pope Sr. invented Florida as America's dream vacationland. This journey back to the attraction in its heyday brims with wonderful images, true tales, and the author's great love for and understanding of the real Florida.\"--Joy Wallace Dickinson, author of Orlando: City of Dreams\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Before the monstrous Mouse infested the orange groves, luring tourists to its predigested 'fun,' Cypress Gardens was Florida's premier attraction, a crazy salad of sunshine, water, flowers, palm trees, and pretty girls in bathing suits performing dare-devilish stunts. This is a terrific book.\" --Diane Roberts, NPR commentator and author ofDream State\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTo the average person weathering a New England winter, Dick Pope's Cypress Gardens must have looked even more exotic than a trip to Alice's Wonderland. The images coming out of his promotional powerhouse appeared in magazines, newspapers, newsreels, and movies. These Technicolor glories depicted everything from bathing beauties aquaplaning through walls of fire to southern belles relaxing beneath huge tropical plants, from Don Ameche proposing to Betty Grable under moss-hung cypress trees to Esther Williams performing a water ballet in the famous Florida-shaped pool.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was all happening in sleepy Winter Haven, where one real estate maverick turned tourism tycoon was out to sell \"100,000 [visitors] 25 cents worth of Florida.\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Brilliantly illustrated with over 250 vibrant images, \u003ci\u003eCypress Gardens, America's Tropical Wonderland\u003c\/i\u003e reveals the empire Dick Pope built from its origins as remote swampland to its heyday as a famous water-sports destination and playground for such stars as Joan Crawford, Johnny Carson, and Carol Burnett, as well as royalty from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to King Hussein of Jordan.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Lu Vickers also discusses the park's decline following the construction of Walt Disney World, changes in management, the evolving interests and vacationing habits of the nation, as well as its outlook for the future as a part of LEGOLAND Florida.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51151665627409,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51151667003665,"sku":"NIN9780813034997","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081303499X.jpg?v=1763126755"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-lu-vickers.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}