2019 Florida Antiquarian Book Fair was a terrific time

That was the book fair that was. The 38th Florida Antiquarian Book Fair is history. The book lovers' gathering in St. Petersburg is over for another year. We recap the highlights in this video and another one we'll make this weekend. We  hope you enjoy it, and we hope you'll come to the book fair next year if you missed it this year.

LIVE AT 2:30: Join us for Rare Book Cafe

Welcome to the ninth episode of Rare Book Cafe 2.0. Our guest is Michael Lister, author of the John Jordan "Blood" mysteries, the Jimmy "Soldier" Riley noir mysteries, and the award-winning Double Exposure, a stream-of-consciousness thriller set in forests and swamps of northwest Florida. In a pre-recorded segment, Michael shares insight into his writing as well as a look at some of his collectible treasures.

Listen to this announcement and share it with friends

Please listen to this special announcement from Sarah Smith, manager of the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. This is about the change in dates from our usual time on the second full weekend in March to April 21-23, 2017. This change is taking place because the New York Antiquarian Book Fair and two shadow fair are moving to our usual time in March. We have taking this step to accommodate booksellers and book buyers who attend the New York show and are regulars at our show.

Please watch Michael Slicker, chairman of the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair committee on Rare Book Cafe on Blab.im this Saturday, May 28 at 2:30 p.m. Mike will discuss the date change of the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair and answer questions from call-in viewers.

How to be a hero to your book lover

It's really not too early to think about the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. Here's why! Yes, the book fair isn't until March but Christmas is just around the corner. A perfect gift for the book lover in your life might be the experience of attending the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. You can order tickets right now thanks to the miracle of modern science and our friends at Eventbrite. Here's the link. http://www.eventbrite.com/e/2015-florida-antiquarian-book-fair-tickets-9658568037 Buy the tickets. You'll get a confirmation by email that you can print out. Slap a bow on it and you're done. Plus, you're a hero to your book lover.

It's amazing! It's unusual! It's our book fair!

Bookseller Vivian Moore of Alpharetta, Georgia, will return to the book fair in March.

We were pondering the other day all the amazing things you see at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair each year. This year the theme is children’s books, and we know that our dealers will have plenty of unusual children’s books to see. But, as always, the book fair is much more than any one theme.

When you think about it, it’s really hard to take it all in. Veterans of the book fair say it’s a good idea to plan to come all three days because you couldn’t possibly take it all in on just one day. You really need time to leisurely browse all the booths then home in on the items that really interest you.

Actually, the name book fair is so inadequate because it is so much more. Don’t worry, we’re not changing our name to the Florida Antiquarian Books, Regular Cool Books, Children’s-Books-You-Remember-From-When-You-Were-A-Kid, Signed-First-Edition-Books, Antique Maps, Illuminated Manuscripts, Vintage Photographs, Antique Autographs, Cool-Printed-Pieces-From-The-Civil-War, Awesome-Sauce-Extremely-Rare-Published-In-The-16th-Century-Books, And-Other-Stuff-We-Haven’t-Even-Mentioned Fair.

Book Fair will have to do.

Besides, you already know that “Book Fair” really means much more. It’s sort of a code phrase, isn’t it? Sort of like a speakeasy in the Roaring Twenties – knock on the door, say the secret password and they let you in. Those who know the code know the joys of the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. Of course, there's no password at the book fair but you get the idea.

This post started out to be about the picture you see at the top but obviously we got a little sidetracked. That’s our friend Vivian Moore, who will be exhibiting at the book fair in March. Vivian lives in Alpharetta, Georgia, now but she used to live in Tampa, and she was part of the very first Florida Antiquarian Book Fair 33 years ago.

We don’t know exactly what Vivian will be bringing to the book fair this year, but we do know that what she brings is always fascinating. In this picture, she’s holding a very cool photo post card of downtown Tampa in the 1920s produced by the Florida News Company.

See, now that’s what we’re talking about. How very amazing! How very unusual!  It is discoveries like these that keep people coming back year after year. There’s only one Florida Antiquarian Book Fair and it only happens once a year. That’s why people mark it on their calendar and make sure they are here.

“Yeah, it’s a Book Fair.” (Delivered with an arched eyebrow and a knowing smile.)

How many authors can you name?

Plan your visit to Florida Antiquarian Book Fair

Have you been to the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair? What advice would you give newcomers? Leave your comments below on the blog or give us your thoughts on Facebook.

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Where the Book Fair lives

WWI authority to speak at the Book Fair

Graydon Tunstall, author of Blood in the Snow

Graydon Tunstall tells a great war story.

The University of South Florida professor is an authority on modern wars, particularly World War I. He will be the featured speaker at the 30th Annual Florida Antiquarian Book Fair in March.

The Florida Antiquarian Book Fair runs March 11-13 at The Coliseum in downtown St. Petersburg.

Tunstall wrote the definitive book on a war the leaders of Austria-Hungary, Poland and Russia wanted everyone to forget because it was such an utter disaster.

Volumes have been written about the war on the Western Front, much of it fought in France. It was a conflict that introduced trench warfare, barbed wire and poison gas, and left nine million people dead. It resulted in a great body of literature and non-fiction works, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms, C.S. Forester’s The African Queen, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and, of course, many more.

Lesser known until Tunstall’s book was the war on the Eastern Front, a conflict that was less about the clash of troops than it was about each army’s struggle with the terrain, the weather and the lack of supplies.

Tunstall’s book Blood on the Snow is subtitled The Carpathian Winter War 1915. It is a chapter in European warfare history that the leaders of Austria-Hungary, Poland and Russia wanted people to forget about, fraught as it was with such ill-considered policy, strategy and execution.

In the winter of 1915, huge Russian and Austrian-Hungarian armies engaged in fierce campaigns that resulted in their near-annihilation. The mission: to rescue 130,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers who were trapped by the Russians in Fortress Przemysl, which sits about 160 miles east of Kraków near the Polish border with the Ukraine.

Tunstall’s research showed that troops on both sides were ill-equipped, ill-trained and ill-informed for their missions. Furthermore, official policy hid the results of the war from the citizens of all countries involved. It was a chapter in each of their histories that leaders simply wanted to go away. A million soldiers on each side died in the conflict. Many were the victims of the fierce winter and the lack of proper equipment and supplies.

One of the results of Tunstall’s research is that descendants of soldiers who fought and died in these campaigns have now learned the truth about what happened. Only the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these soldiers remain, and family stories lacked any satisfactory details of the soldiers' fortunes. Tunstall encountered family members in Vienna who sought him out to learn more about their ancestors.

In the end, troop casualties from the rescue mission far outnumbered those requiring rescue. The trapped forces ultimately surrendered to the Russians and were shipped off to Siberia. And, until Tunstall’s book, there was little understanding of how important that conflict was to be to the futures of Russia, Germany, Austria and Hungary.

Since his book came out last May, Tunstall has been in demand as a speaker, appearing at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School an Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine, and regionally at the Western Front Association’s Florida Gulf Coast Chapter in Gainesville.

He speaks of the great toll of frivolous warfare. Indeed, Graydon Tunstall tells a great Great War story.

A perfect setting for the Book Fair

The site of the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, The Coliseum was featured in the 1985 movie Cocoon.

The Coliseum was built during the Roaring Twenties as a ballroom. It was the Jazz Age, and young flappers just wanted to have fun; amid the ballyhoo and trumpery of the real estate boom, the American idols of the times like crooner Rudy Vallee set hearts aflutter with their boyish good looks and their melodious voices.

St. Petersburg residents consider it a treasure, and rightly so. With its polished oak floors and graceful arches, the venue, no longer used exclusively as a dance hall, still excites those who enter its doors. It evokes a time past when jazz and swing were in the air and big names like Paul Whiteman and Harry James brought their big bands to the Sunshine City.

The city of St. Petersburg bought the building in 1989 and made extensive renovations, including a large refinishing project completed just last year.  It is considered one of the Bay area's most unique facilities, hosting trade shows, dances, banquets, and, of course, the annual Florida Antiquarian Book Fair.

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