A Town without Pity

“A Florida backwater—twice thrust onto the national stage over controversies decades apart—is again centered in this fishbowl of a book, a page-turning examination of the machinations of a municipal mob under the nation’s microscope. The haunting questions that gurgle throughout: Can a place be bad, and what makes it so?”—Ben Montgomery, author of Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

“A chilling, lurid account of a forgotten era’s dual panics of crime and AIDS. Jason Vuic’s meticulous research into an oft-overlooked region’s history of racism, Jim Crow justice, and medical malpractice has eerie echoes in the present day.”—Ali Winston, coauthor of The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-Up in Oakland

“Jason Vuic has written a book that the United States desperately needs today. A Town without Pity is bristling with practical lessons in a time when attacks on medical science are coinciding with efforts to censor attempts to learn from America’s troubling racial past. Vuic brilliantly shows how one town in Florida exemplifies the worst as well as the best examples of the nation’s responses to injustices.”—Paul Ortiz, author of An African American and Latinx History of the United States

“This well-researched and tremendously readable book spotlights two controversies that buffeted a small Florida town in the final decades of the twentieth century. Through his powerful narration and detailed analysis, Jason Vuic considers what these stories might mean today for this and the countless other American towns still coming to grips with complex, painful, and often unpleasant pasts.”—Paul Renfro, author of The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America

“A compelling story of miscarriages of justice and compassion, both in the same small town during overlapping times. It is eminently readable and unputdownable.”—Mary E. Adkins, author of Chesterfield Smith, America’s Lawyer

“Highlights the darker side of the Sunshine State’s reputation for sun, fun, and prosperity and is a riveting account of how two events thrust an insular Florida community into the national spotlight.”—James M. Denham, author of Fifty Years of Justice: A History of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida

“A fascinating deep dive that grapples with some of the most pressing issues of the post–civil rights era in American history.”—Brandon T. Jett, author of Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South