The Gulf : the making of an American sea / Jack E. Davis.
Davis, Jack E., 1956- author.
2017
F296 .D38 2017 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title The Gulf : the making of an American sea / Jack E. Davis.
Author Davis, Jack E., 1956- author.
Edition First edition.
ISBN 9780871408662 (hardcover)
087140866X (hardcover)
Published New York ; London : Liveright Publishing Corporation, A Division of W.W. Norton & Company [2017]
Language English
Description x, 592 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Call Number F296 .D38 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification 909/.096364
Summary Significant beyond tragic oil spills and hurricanes, the Gulf has historically been one of the world's most bounteous marine environments, supporting human life for millennia. Based on the premise that nature lies at the center of human existence, Davis takes readers on a compelling and, at times, wrenching journey from the Florida Keys to the Texas Rio Grande, along marshy shorelines and majestic estuarine bays, both beautiful and life-giving, though fated to exploitation by esurient oil men and real-estate developers. Davis shares previously untold stories, parading a vast array of historical characters past our view: sports-fishermen, presidents, Hollywood executives, New England fishers, the Tabasco king, a Texas shrimper, and a New York architect who caught the "big one". Sensitive to the imminent effects of climate change, and to the difficult task of rectifying the assaults of recent centuries, this book suggests how a penetrating examination of a single region's history can inform the country's path ahead. -- adapted from book jacket.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Awards Kirkus Prize, 2017.
Pulitzer Prize, 2018.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
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Prologue : history, nature, and a forgotten sea
Introduction : birth
Part one. Estuaries, and the lie of the land and sea : aborigines and colonizing Europeans. Mounds
El golfo de México
Unnecessary death
A most important river, and a "magnificent" bay
Part two. Sea and sky : American debuts in the nineteenth century. Manifest destiny
A fishy sea
The wild fish that tamed the coast
Birds of a feather, shot together
Part three. Preludes to the future. From bayside to beachside
Oil and the Texas toe dip
Oil and the Louisiana plunge
Islands, shifting sands of time
Wind and water
Part four. Saturation and loss : post-1945. The growth coast
Florida worry, Texas slurry
Rivers of stuff
Runoff, and runaway
Sand in the hourglass
Losing the edge
Epilogue : a success story amid so much else.

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