"Finding Florida," by T. D. Allman Postcard photographed by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images Anyone who has commuted to a Fort Lauderdale beach will be familiar with the journey T. D. Allman describes in "Finding Florida: The True History of the Sunshine State."Because drawbridges that lead to the ocean's edge are raised to allow large boats up the inland waterways, highway passengers are almost invariably subjected to long waits. This imposition - and the fact that the people behind steering wheels don't protest - drives Allman to distraction. "Not one person demands to know: Why is it that the people with boats take precedence over us?" he writes. The Florida beach story encapsulates a pattern Allman discerns throughout Florida history. And that is, the interests of an avaricious elite have consistently taken precedence over the well-being of the vast majority of the state's residents. The consequences of this injustice go well beyond traffic jams: over more than 500 pages Allman shows how slavery, the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, white supremacist government and egregious corporate welfare took root in Florida. Allman, an accomplished magazine journalist and the author of "Miami: City of the Future," asserts that such inequities have persisted in part because myths about the region's past whitewash - and in some cases factually contradict - what actually occurred. "Finding Florida"is a cross between a corrective history and a passionate jeremiad, offered up as a call to arms. The book extends from the arrival of the conquistadors in the early 16th century to the killing of the African-American teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012. Those five centuries provide plenty of fodder for Allman's contention that Florida has been plagued with morally corrupt governance since the United States annexed it in the early 1800s. The Spaniards were far from ideal colonizers, but as Allman points out, under their rule blacks, Indians and those of mixed race mostly lived freely. Once Florida came under United States jurisdiction in 1821, however, mass slavery was imposed, and continued through the Civil War. The American military uprooted and massacred the Seminole Indians, banishing the survivors to an unfamiliar land west of the Mississippi. Such violent racism had a long-lasting impact. In the 20th century, Allman reminds us, Florida was among the worst states for lynchings. As late as the 1960s an interracial couple were sentenced to hard labor for defying the state's antimiscegenation laws. It's not just in race relations that Florida has a dismal record. Allman makes a persuasive case that the state has suffered from stunningly shortsighted priorities. In 1860 Florida ranked last in the Union in its spending on education. It held the same position in 2010 as measured by the proportion of income devoted to schooling. Yet it has been generous to the well connected. The brazen corruption of early territorial governors made it possible for men like Gen. Duncan Clinch - who was instrumental in the subjugation of the Florida Seminoles - to engage in land grabs that made them millionaires. At the start of the 20th century, Henry Flagler, John Rockefeller's partner in the creation of Standard Oil and the founder of West Palm Beach, successfully pressured the state to grant him one million acres for his ill-fated scheme to build an offshore railroad to Key West. More recently, Walt Disney managed to slip a series of statutes through the Florida State Legislature that exempted Disney World from regulations on the environment, voting rights and consumer safety. In fact, Allman eviscerates just about all the men (and the handful of women) who have been influential in the state's history. American presidents come in for particularly scathing indictments. Allman notes that it is not an accident that Andrew Jackson, who served as governor of Florida after leading a military incursion into the state, was saddled with a moniker - Old Hickory - that refers to the wood used to beat slaves. "Jackson's long-term purpose was to transform Florida - as he already had Alabama, Mississippi and his adopted home state, Tennessee - into a white supremacist slave state," Allman writes. John Quincy Adams, who served as secretary of state when the United States annexed Florida, doesn't fare much better. While it is commonly held that the United States "purchased" the state from the Spanish, no money was ever paid to Spain. For his role in acquiring the territory, Allman calls Adams "as much a thug as Jackson was." Alexandra Starr is an Emerson fellow at the New America Foundation.