Review by New York Times Review
FOR THOSE WHO LIVE distant from it, the Gulf of Mexico made its most vivid appearance on the national stage for all the wrong reasons: the biggest accidental oil spill ever to occur in offshore waters. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout poured 4.9 million barrels of crude into the gulf, damaged beaches and coastal estuaries, and poisoned marine life up and down the food chain, from algae to dolphins. The burning drill rig and underwater plume of hydrocarbons was a media sensation, an unfolding crisis replete with stunning pictures and a herculean mobilization of humans and technology. In Jack E. Davis's sprightly and sweeping new history, "The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea," the spill is both culmination and footnote to five centuries of restless human energies. The largest gulf and 10th-largest body of water on earth, it began forming 150 million years ago, after the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea. Its depth and breadth have fluctuated over the ensuing eons: Its northern tides once lapped shoreline in present-day Illinois. In its current configuration it touches more than 3,000 miles of mainland coast along five American states and six in Mexico, and supports a commercial fishery worth three-quarters of a billion dollars in landings revenue annually. In Davis's hands, the story reads like a watery version of the history of the American West. Both places saw Spanish incursions from the south, mutual incomprehension in the meeting of Europeans and aboriginals, waves of disease that devastated the natives and a relentless quest by the newcomers for the raw materials of empire. There were scoundrels and hucksters, booms and busts, senseless killing in sublime landscapes and a tragic belief in the inexhaustible bounty of nature. A few artists and eccentrics fought to preserve the ecology of the place and sometimes succeeded. Whereas the West was re-engineered to account for a shortage of water, the Gulf of Mexico was re-engineered to account for a surfeit of oil. America's southern lip is almost entirely flat where land meets water, with none of the cliffs that here and there greet the Atlantic and Pacific. But it was once ringed with mounds of discarded mollusk shells, middens of the Calusa people whose size and robust health astonished the early Spaniards. Davis quotes the Texas naturalist and writer Roy Bedichek, who said, "There remains the unimpeachable evidence of ancient oyster production along the coast which staggers the imagination." Centuries after the Calusa's disappearance, Americans quarried the mounds and crushed the shells for road bed material, pillaging antiquarian monuments for the paved expressways of the petroleum age. It was the rumor of gold and silver that caused the first Europeans to probe gulf waters. Many met with shipwreck and starvation, even as a native culture thrived along the coastal estuaries, feasting on that bounteous supply of seafood. Despite their complex communication networks and endlessly renewable source of protein, the natives were destroyed in the blink of an eye. Mostly it was the newcomers' pathogens that did them in, although some were victims of an attitude that viewed them as "artless and lazy" for not exploiting their material abundance for purposes of commerce. Charismatic fauna of the human variety abound in the region's lore, and Davis gives many of them cameos. Ponce de León took a fatal poisoned dart in the thigh during a bad day at the beach. John Muir took ill from malaria and geeked out on the flora while he convalesced. Winslow Homer took a hankering to the light, Rachel Carson took an interest in the ecology, and Ernest Hemingway took trophy fish from the deep. Although the gulf region harbored no gold, it possessed astonishing riches of bird life. Davis, the author of "An Everglades Providence," recounts "one of the bloodiest crimes committed against wild-life in modern times," the slaughter of plumage birds for feathered hats in the 19 th century. The killing got so out of hand that the gulf's population of snowy egrets dipped below the population of the endangered American bison. Five million birds annually fed the hat business, leaving the gulf with a mere 10 percent of its previous number of plume birds by the beginning of the 20 th century. Likewise, oyster beds were scoured and permanently damaged, and shrimp populations were hit hard by the introduction of innovative seafood-harvesting methods like the seine net. New laws and a dawning environmental consciousness helped curtail the worst abuses of commercial fishing, but in Davis's reckoning, one practice in particular changed the gulf forever: the pursuit of tarpon. Sport fishing brought waves of tourists to the water, all of whom required hotels, restaurants and waterside pavilions for dancing, drinking and swapping tall tales of grappling with the great silver monsters of the sea. First railroads and later highways conveyed sporty types to and from the gulf. The balmy weather and brilliant coastal beaches added their own charms, and the shabby baubles and ticky-tacky architecture of modern industrial tourism were born. The 20 th century accelerated the changes. On the gulf's eastern shores, developers dredged and filled marshes and estuaries in order to sell a slice of spoiled paradise to Northern transplants. On the western side, industry took hold with the discovery of oil in 1901 at Spindle-top in Texas, and oil soon became a major gulf resource. By the end of the century 181,000 wells had been sunk on- and offshore in Louisiana alone, and more than 70,000 miles of pipeline right of way had been secured to transport oil and gas through the state's marshes. Denuded of its wetlands and mangrove forests from Texas to Florida, much of the coastline started slumping into the sea. A place that brought explorers to its shores in search of precious metals is now inundated with toxic metals thanks to rivers carrying industrial wastewater. Barrier islands and coastal marshes threaten to disappear because of global warming. Each year Midwestern farm runoff, awash in nitrogen fertilizer dumped on fields of corn, wheat and other crops, creates a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Because of the dams along its course, the river no longer carries its prodigious load of sediment to the sea- the building material of the Louisiana coast. Future hurricanes promise to swallow more of the unstable edge. 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. He has also given us the story of how a once gorgeous place was made safe for the depredations of the petrochemical age. How it was made safe from petrochemicals is a book I look forward to reading. ? The gulf has been shaped by a tragic belief in the inexhaustible bounty of nature. Philip Connors is the author of two books of nonfiction, "Fire Season" and "All the Wrong Places."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 10, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* A perceptive historical survey of America's Gulf Coast, this fascinating work accents the region's nexus between nature and civilization. Chronologically, Davis' account extends from Spanish discoveries of the early 1500s to the present, but organizationally he centers his inquiries on geographical features and seminal episodes of economic activity. Estuaries, he emphasizes, are the most important aspect of the coastline from Florida to Texas. Their abundant marine life, attested to by shell mounds left by ancient native peoples and commercial and sport fishing, as well as real-estate development and oil and gas extraction earn Davis' discerning attention. A close second in topographical significance is the barrier islands' natural role as protectors of estuaries, while their imposed roles as bombing ranges or high-rise-building sites exemplify the tension between environmental preservation and industrial and construction activity. This constitutes Davis' overarching theme, which also applies to the Gulf's third major piece of geography, the Mississippi River delta. Amid these land- and seascapes Davis populates colorful characters, from would-be conquistadors to business and tourism entrepreneurs to environmental activists, who form a gallery of human interest that easily carries the reader from cover to cover. Marked by thorough knowledge and fluid writing, this work will enhance any collection of American and environmental history.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
"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. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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 Len, 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 pointe.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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
