September 2007
Miami Beach: Blueprint of an Eden
Author: Doner, Michele Oka / Wolfson, Mitchell
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0061346160
ISBN13: 9780061346163
Trim: 9 5/8 X 11 3/8
Pages: 328
Illustrations: color photos throughout
Release Date: 9/12/2007
Price: $49.95 / $64.50 Can.
Territory: W
SYNOPSIS
Miami Beach is the story of an extraordinary time and place, told through the prism of two founding families, the Wolfsons and the Okas. The authors’ fathers were each mayors of Miami Beach, one in the 1940s and the other in the ’50s and early ’60s. Their mothers were prominent first ladies. Their exhaustive family archives provide a rich cultural, architectural, political, social, botanical, stylistic, gastronomic, geoloical, and poetic history of Miami Beach.
The two authors narrate the story of Miami Beach through letters, history, and recollection. But the heart of the book is its sumptuous photographs, architectural blueprints, memorabilia, sheet music, native poetry, maps, drawings, and recipes—everything that gave rise to the contemporary phenomenon that is Miami Beach.
With an introduction by contemporary architectural historian and writer Alastair Gordon, Miami Beach brings together Mickey Mouse, Eleanor Roosevelt, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the composer Manna Zucca, the horticulturalist Tashiro family, opera singer Renata Tebaldi, the singing cowboy Gene Autry, master photographer Arnold Newman, Joan Fields and her Stradivarius, Oscar winner Geraldine Page, producer Robert Evans, architect Morris Lapidus, Jacqueline Kennedy, Anita Ekberg, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Leonard Bernstein, Washington politicos, haute couture outdoor runways, and pre-Vegas nightlife. . . in a memoir that is so visual, conversational, poetic, and filled with family history that its local intensity illuminates a national character.
AUTHOR PROFILE
Michele Oka Doner, born and raised in Miami Beach, FL, is an internationally acclaimed artist whose prolific career spans four decades. The remarkable breadth of her artistic production encompasses public art, sculpture, furniture, jewelry, and functional objects. She is perhaps best known for her numerous public art commissions, including those at New York’s Herald Square Subway Station and the Miami Beach airport. She is represented by the Marlborough Gallery in New York and is frequently featured in books (including Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction) and print media in the U.S. and internationally. Oka Doner maintains studios in New York and Miami Beach.
Mitchell Wolfson Jr., born in Miami, FL, has been an avid collector of predominantly American, European, and Japanese decorative and propaganda arts from the 1885 to 1945 period. A preservationist rather than a collector in the traditional sense, his museum, The Wolfsonian, founded in 1986, pursues a local educational goal, and encourages international scholarly research. The museum and its holdings of more than 100,000 items was donated in 1997 to Florida International University.