The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea

by Jack E. Davis

Overview

Winner • Pulitzer Prize for History
Winner • Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction
Finalist • National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction)
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, NPR, Library Journal, and gCaptain
Booklist Editors’ Choice (History)
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence

In this “cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin” (New York Times), “Davis has written a beautiful homage to a neglected sea” (front page, New York Times Book Review).

Hailed as a “nonfiction epic . . . in the tradition of Jared Diamond’s best-seller Collapse, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic” (Dallas Morning News), Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf is “by turns informative, lyrical, inspiring and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of ‘America’s Sea’ ” (Wall Street Journal). Illuminating America’s political and economic relationship with the environment from the age of the conquistadors to the present, Davis demonstrates how the Gulf’s fruitful ecosystems and exceptional beauty empowered a growing nation. Filled with vivid, untold stories from the sportfish that launched Gulfside vacationing to Hollywood’s role in the country’s first offshore oil wells, this “vast and welltold story shows how we made the Gulf . . . [into] a ‘national sacrifice zone’ ” (Bill McKibben). The first and only study of its kind, The Gulf offers “a unique and illuminating history of the American Southern coast and sea as it should be written” (Edward O. Wilson).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871408679
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	608
Sales rank:	157,134
File size:	26 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Jack E. Davis is the author of the award-winning The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea and An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century. A professor of environmental history at the University of Florida, he lives in Florida and New Hampshire.

Table of Contents

Chronology 1

Prologue: History, Nature, and a Forgotten Sea 3

Introduction: Birth 12

Part 1 Estuaries, and the Lie of the Land and Sea: Aborigines and Colonizing Europeans

1 Mounds 23

2 El Golfo de México 41

3 Unnecessary Death 51

4 A Most Important River, and a "Magnificent" Bay 75

Part 2 Sea and Sky: American Debuts in the Nineteenth Century

5 Manifest Destiny 97

6 A Fishy Sea 114

7 The Wild Fish That Tamed the Coast 150

8 Birds of a Feather, Shot Together 184

Part 3 Preludes to the Future

9 From Bayside to Beachside 223

10 Oil and the Texas Toe Dip 261

11 Oil and the Louisiana Plunge 280

12 Islands, Shifting Sands of Time 304

13 Wind and Water 335

Part 4 Saturation and Loss: Post-1945

14 The Growth Coast 375

15 Florida Worry, Texas Slurry 411

16 Rivers of Stuff 440

17 Runoff, and Runaway 465

18 Sand in the Hourglass 476

19 Losing the Edge 490

Epilogue: A Success Story amid So Much Else 509

Acknowledgments 531

Notes 533

Additional Selected Sources 559

Illustration Credits 565

Index 567

Editorial Reviews

…Jack E. Davis's sprightly and sweeping new history…reads like a watery version of the history of the American West…It is a sad story well told—although I should confess I began the book skeptical of being entertained and edified by 592 pages about a body of water that has come to be used like a sump for the wastes of industry. My doubts proved unwarranted. Davis has written a beautiful homage to a neglected sea, a lyrical paean to its remaining estuaries and marshes, and a marvelous mash-up of human and environmental history.

The New York Times Book Review - Philip Connors

…a sensitive and sturdy work of environmental history…[Davis] has a well-stocked mind, and frequently views the history of the Gulf through the prism of artists and writers including Winslow Homer, Wallace Stevens, Ernest Hemingway and John D. MacDonald. His prose is supple and clear…Davis's book functions, as well, as a cri de coeur about the Gulf's environmental ruin.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

★ 01/23/2017
In this comprehensive and thoroughly researched narrative, Davis, professor of history and sustainability at the University of Florida, positions the Gulf of Mexico as an integral part of American ecology, culture, and—with future good stewardship—economic success. He sprinkles geological and marine history throughout the chronicle of the coast’s demographic changes from indigenous inhabitants to European colonizers, Louisiana Cajuns, Texas roughnecks, and Florida’s tourists. Davis unflinchingly addresses the decades of oil spills, overfishing, and poor environmental practices that reduced resources. He also describes the decline of coastal marshes, which protect against hurricanes, and the erosion stemming from ill-conceived Army Corps of Engineer projects. Hurricanes Camille and Katrina and the catastrophic BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill poignantly receive their due. Davis also discusses inspired conservation efforts to combat the fashion industry’s feather fascination and subsequent decimation of snowy egrets. The density of the fact-packed chapters calls for a deliberate reading pace so as not to overlook any of Davis’s thought-provoking commentary and keen descriptions. Rather than advocate an impractical hands-off approach to dealing with the Gulf’s myriad issues, Davis makes the convincing argument that wiser, far-sighted practices—including those aimed at combating climate change—could help the Gulf region to remain a bastion of resources for the foreseeable future. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"An incisive, comprehensive and entertaining portrait of the world’s most diverse and productive marine ecosystems—from its lusty birth in the chaos of shifting continental plates to its slow and agonizing death of a million cuts inflicted by oil and gas extractors, dredge-and-fill operators, ‘condo-canyon’ developers, industrial-scale fishers, fertilizer-dependent farmers, chemical plant entrepreneurs, love-it-to-death snow birds and so many more. . . . Amid all of the pollution and exploitation, this could easily have been a grim history of ‘Paradise Lost.’ But in Davis’ skilled hands it as much love story as tragedy."

Gainesville Sun - Ron Cunningham

"Splendid . . . . Davis is a historian, and this book is packed with research, but The Gulf does not read like a textbook. He is a graceful, clear, often lyrical writer who makes sometimes surprising, always illuminating connections—it's not a stretch to compare him to John McPhee. And he is telling an important story, especially for those of us who live around what he calls the American Sea. What happens to it happens to us, and the more we know, the better equipped we'll be to deal with a future on its shores."

Tampa Bay Times - Colette Bancroft

"With characteristic concision and lucidity, Lynn Hunt takes on the methodological dilemmas facing all historians today…A thought-provoking snapshot of where historians stand now and where they might be headed. Lively and engaging, this book will help both budding and seasoned historians understand the current state of their discipline."

Jordan Fisher Smith

"Jack Davis has delivered a unique and illuminating history of the American Southern coast and sea as it should be written: how humanity and the environment evolved over ten millennia as a single system."

Edward O. Wilson

"The Gulf takes on troubling environmental issues with a lyrical voice and a steady appreciation of history."

Mark Kurlansky

"Hunt has…the most reliable eye for new trends in the American historical profession, and what she considers important always amounts to more than the sum of her current enthusiasms…she has a preternatural sense of the new new thing being touted by historians to study old things."

Darcy Frey

"The Gulf starts with the geology of plate tectonics, proceeds through Indian settlements before the arrivals of Europeans, advances to hurricanes, the Dead Zone, and oil pollution, then analyzes the future. And it does all this very, very well. Books which attempt such comprehensive treatments of a subject are too often, as the saying goes, a mile wide and an inch deep. This book is 1,000 miles wide and 10,000 feet deep. It's an extraordinary achievement."

John M Barry

"Steering seamlessly between nature writing and historical narrative, Davis offers an elegant epic of how America’s relationship with the Gulf of Mexico defines our character and our future."

Cynthia Barnett

"A tremendous book. Davis is not only one of our preeminent environmental historians, but also a first-rate storyteller and prose stylist. Lay readers and scholars alike will be delighted by The Gulf, a lovely evocation of the natural world and the problematic ways our nation has profited from it."

Blake Bailey

"This vast and well-told story shows how we made the Gulf of Mexico, in particular, into what local activists have begun to call a 'national sacrifice zone,' at enormous cost to its residents of all species. It’s a sobering tale, and one hopes that reading it will help us hit bottom and acknowledge the need to change."

Bill McKibben

"A sensitive and sturdy work of environmental history. . . . [Davis] has a well-stocked mind, and frequently views the history of the Gulf through the prism of artists and writers including Winslow Homer, Wallace Stevens, Ernest Hemingway and John D. MacDonald. His prose is supple and clear. . . . A cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin."

New York Times - Dwight Garner

"This scholarly magnum opus is quite long, but it reads like a novel. Students of writing, history, ecology and the environment will be riveted by this book, and I think it should be required reading for every American, especially those in the White House. If you read only two books about the environment this year, make this one of those two."

Forbes

"A perceptive historical survey of America’s Gulf Coast, this fascinating work accents the region’s nexus between nature and civilization. . . . Marked by thorough knowledge and fluid writing, this work will enhance any collection of American and environmental history."

Booklist, Starred review - Gilbert Taylor

"In the tradition of Jared Diamond's best-seller Collapse and Simon Winchester's Atlantic comes Jack E. Davis' nonfiction epic, The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, which strives both to celebrate and defend its subject—the Gulf of Mexico. . . . Detailed and exhaustive, written in lucid, impeccable prose, The Gulf is a fine work of information and insight, destined to be admired and cited."

Dallas Morning News - William J. Cobb

"Like its subject, The Gulf is big, beautiful, and beguiling. Meticulously researched and sparklingly written, it is also a cautionary tale about a paradise ill-served by humankind."

William Souder

"A wide-ranging, well-told story, by turns informative, lyrical, inspiring and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of ‘America’s Sea.’"

Wall Street Journal - Gerard Helferich

"Vivid. . . . As Davis demonstrates in this absorbing narrative, the history of the Gulf teaches us that nature is most generous whenever we respect its sovereignty."

Bookpage - Henry L. Carrigan

★ 01/01/2017
"If Jefferson's West was the land of the nation's manifest destiny, the Gulf was its sea." So argues Davis (history, Univ. of Florida; An Everglades Providence) in this magnificent chronicle of the Gulf of Mexico. Spanning a period from the gulf's geological formation to the present, this book is organized around the "natural characteristics of the Gulf" (i.e., its fauna, flora, weather, and landscape). The stories of the Europeans—the Spanish, who found the gulf; the French, who discovered its connection to the Mississippi; and the British, who began to map it—will be familiar to many readers, but Davis's retelling still sticks. The core of the title, though, concerns "America's Gulf" in the 19th century onward: when the Coastal Survey finished charting the coast; when the area's first real industry, commercial fishing, flourished; when sport fishing and beach tourism became popular; and when the petroleum industry took off. Environmental perturbations followed. And lost, like artifacts in the Florida aboriginal Calusa's shell mounds, was the lesson of holding a "prudent relationship with nature." VERDICT This is a work of astonishing breadth: richly peopled, finely structured, beautifully written. It should appeal equally well to Gulf coast residents and snowbirds, students of environmental history, and general readers.—Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont.

Library Journal

★ 2017-01-16
A sweeping environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that duly considers the ravages of nature and man.In light of the 2010 devastation of the BP oil spill, environmental historian Davis (History and Sustainability Studies/Univ. of Florida; An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, 2009, etc.) presents an engaging, truly relevant new study of the Gulf as a powerful agent in the American story, one that has become "lost in the pages of American history." Once the habitat of the highly developed, self-sustaining Calusa indigenous people, the rich estuary of the Gulf is the 10th largest body of water in the world, and it forms the sheltered basin that creates the warm, powerful Gulf Stream, which allowed the first explorers, such as Ponce de León, to make their ways back to the Old World. Davis meanders through the early history of this fascinating sea, which became a kind of graveyard to many early marooned explorers due to shipwrecks and run-ins with natives. Yet the conquistadors took little note of the abundant marine life inhabiting the waters and, unaccountably, starved. A more familiar economy was established at the delta of the muddy, sediment-rich Mississippi River, discovered by the French. The author focuses on the 19th century as the era when the Gulf finally asserted its place in the great move toward Manifest Destiny; it would "significantly enlarge the water communication of national commerce and shift the boundary of the country from vulnerable land to protective sea." The Gulf states would also become a mecca of tourism and fishing and, with the discovery of oil, enter a dire period of the "commercialization of national endowments." The story of this magnificent body of water and its wildlife grows tragic at this point—e.g., the "killing juggernaut" of Gulf wading birds to obtain fashionable feathers. Still, it remains an improbable, valiant survival tale in the face of the BP oil spill and ongoing climate change. An elegant narrative braced by a fierce, sobering environmental conviction.

Kirkus Reviews