The Golden Years: The Florida Legislature, '70s and '80s Reflections on Campaigns and Public Service.

• Author: MacQueen, Kim
• Position: Book review

The Golden Years: The Florida Legislature, '70s

and '80s Reflections on Campaigns and Public

Service

By Robert McKnight

At times Robert McKnight's The Golden Years feels less like reading a book than like sifting through a box of well-kept mementos. The thorough collection of photos, documents, '70s political posters, and handwritten notes interspersed with stories and personal observations date back to the author's high school days, but center mostly on his time in the Florida Legislature.

McKnight, a Miami Democrat, served in the Florida House from 1974 to 1978 and then in the Senate until 1982. The Golden Years chronicles McKnight's earliest, budding political interest from the time he won his first election for Lake Worth Student City Council in 1962. The storyline soon settles on his political career and the friendships and alliances made, the babies born, and votes cast, until the book wraps up around 1986.

Political and legislative victories and defeats alike are plaintively detailed and disarmingly candid, as McKnight would never shy away from telling the whole, balanced story. One good example is his recounting of a bill defining brain death in the House Health and Mental Health Subcommittee while he was chair, 30 years before Terry Schiavo. McKnight recounts the whole process, including how he prayed, sought scholarly advice, and got some of the more philosophical variety from Senator Jack Gordon, who told him: "Senator, this is not for the faint of heart."

Probably the best story, though, is McKnight's tale of meeting Governor Reubin Askew for the first time, on the same afternoon as McKnight's...