America's fourth largest state, the site of the upcoming Republican primary, and home to snow birds and alligators aplenty: that's Florida.

William Finnegan delved into the role Cuban Americans played in the 2004 election. "Although both of Florida’s senators are Democrats and the state was once a Democratic stronghold, it now has nearly as many registered Republicans. There are large groups of non-Cuban Latino voters in Florida—Dominicans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, and, most numerously, Puerto Ricans, many of whom live around Orlando, where thousands work at Disney World," he wrote. "Most of these voters are Democrats, but Jeb Bush and his family, particularly his Mexican-born wife, Columba, and their telegenic son, George P., are extremely popular, inspiring a great deal of cross-party voting. Still, many Florida Democrats—especially African-Americans, who were disproportionately, and often unfairly, disqualified in a sweep of supposed felons from the rolls in 2000—remain incensed about the election, and will be strongly motivated to go to the polls this year. The vote should be close again. And Cuban-American turnout—how much the Cubans care about keeping George W. Bush in office—could be decisive."

Megan McArdle looked at the housing market, and the controversy it inspired. "Two of Wall Street's savviest value investors, Bruce Berkowitz and David Einhorn, pride themselves on their rigorous analysis. Now they're locked in a scorched-earth dispute over the value of some Florida real estate," she wrote. "How could they look at the same facts and reach such wildly different conclusions, and what does that say about the “value” of value investing?"

Carl Hiaasen described an environmental problem in the state that he loves. "I fell in love with the Florida Keys by staring at a road map. I was about five years old. My grandfather was a storyteller, and my father was a sportfisherman, and I had listened to their exciting tales long enough. I wanted them to take me," he writes. "Outdoor magazines extolled the Keys as jewels or gems or a string of pearls dangling languidly from the continental flank. From the map I memorized the islands transected by U.S. 1. They had lyrical, funky names—Sugarloaf, Saddlebunch, Ramrod, Big Coppitt, Lower Matecumbe. To a boy growing up on the steamy, iron-flat apron of the Everglades, it seemed fantastic that an exotic undersea paradise existed only three hours away—maybe less, the way my dad could drive. This I already knew: The Keys were surrounded by water—the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, Florida Bay—and the water was blue, by god. All you had to do was look at the map."

T.D. Allman profiles Orlando. "Everything happening to America today is happening here, and it's far removed from the cookie-cutter suburbanization of life a generation ago. The Orlando region has become Exhibit A for the ascendant power of our cities' exurbs: blobby coalescences of look-alike, overnight, amoeba-like concentrations of population far from city centers," he wrote. "These huge, sprawling communities are where more and more Americans choose to be, the place where job growth is fastest, home building is briskest, and malls and megachurches are multiplying as newcomers keep on coming. Who are all these people? They're you, they're me, and increasingly, they are nothing like the blue-eyed "Dick and Jane" of mythical suburban America."

And Allison Glock writes about one of the more dangerous pastimes in Florida. "Time was, an alligator wrestler could make a decent living. This was before YouTube. Before Steve Irwin. Before PETA," she writes. "Back when kids were thrilled by the spectacle of nature and still enamored of the simple pleasures of watching man and beast roll around in a sand pit. Back when catching a fish was the highlight of summer vacation. Back when Wii was something you did in the community swimming pool."