Just after the Civil War, two states prominently laid claim to being America's paradise destinations. Private companies, state agencies, and journalists all lent a hand in creating a seductive, expansionist imagery that promoted semitropical California and Florida and helped "sell" Americans on the idea of an attainable paradise within the United States.

In Tropic of Hopes, Henry Knight examines the promotion of California and Florida from the end of the Civil War to the eve of the Great Depression, a period when both states were transformed from remote, sparsely populated locales into two of the most publicized and dreamed-about destinations in America. Using the discussion of climate, geography, race, and environment to link agricultural, tourist, and urban development in these regions, Knight provides a highly original and informative account.

This in-depth comparison of the way the two states were promoted adds to existing historiographies on California and Florida while providing expert analysis of how railroad kingpins, land barons, agriculturalists, chambers of commerce invented and promoted an image of these states as the American Paradise.

Henry Knight is lecturer in American studies at Northumbria University.