The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea PDF

Author: Jack E. Davis

Publisher: Liveright Publishing

Published: 2017-03-14

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0871408678

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Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History Winner of the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction A National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 One of the Washington Post's Best Books of the Year 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).

The American Sea

The American Sea PDF

Author: Rezneat Milton Darnell

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2015-06-02

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 1623492823

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For more than a decade, Rezneat Darnell worked on this major synthesis of what is known about the Gulf of Mexico. His goal: to bring a deeper understanding of “the American Sea” to students, scientists, managers, and educated citizens of the public at large. The American Sea builds on Darnell’s own research, the research of his graduate students, government agency research reports, data synthesis reports, and literature summaries to present a holistic view of the Gulf of Mexico. Although he is recognized as a pioneer in the study of continental shelf ecology, Darnell largely resisted specialization, remaining throughout his career “the writer and bringer together of things.” Here, he has written a book that embraces history, geology, geography, meteorology, chemistry, biology, ecology, and human relations in one comprehensive reference. Although it is thorough and meticulous in coverage, what comes through in these pages is the enormity, complexity, and mystery of the world that lies just beyond the Texas vacation beach, the Louisiana wetland, or the Mexico fishing village. In addition to photographs of deep water and other organisms that are included in the book, a number of illustrations have been added to provide excellent visual material, including historical and ocean floor maps and many works of original art depicting marine species, sea turtles, fish, and crustaceans.

America and the Sea

America and the Sea PDF

Author: Benjamin Woods Labaree

Publisher: Mystic Seaport Museum

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13:

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Spanning the centuries from maritime activities before Columbus to the nation's maritime involvement today, this rich, complex archive provides a new history of the United States from the fundamental perspective of the sea that surrounds it, and the rivers and lakes that link its vast interior to the seacoast. 350 photos, 55 in color. 10 maps.

The Free Sea

The Free Sea PDF

Author: James Kraska

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2018-06-15

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1682471179

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The Free Sea offers a unique, single-volume analysis of incidents in American history that affected U.S. freedom of navigation at sea. The book spans more than 200 years, beginning in the Colonial era with the Quasi-War with France in 1798 and extending to contemporary Freedom of Navigation operations in the South China Sea. Through wars and numerous crises with North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Russia and China, freedom of navigation has been a persistent challenge for the United States, a nation reliant on open seas for economic prosperity, military security and global order. This volume focuses on the struggle to retain freedom of the seas. Challenges to U.S. warships and maritime commerce have pushed, and continue to challenge, the United States to vindicate its rights through diplomatic, legal, and military means, underscoring the need for the strategic resolve in the global maritime commons.

Sea-Brothers

Sea-Brothers PDF

Author: Bert Bender

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-11-16

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 151281430X

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Sea-Brothers offers the most extensive analysis to date of the sea and its meaning in American literature. On the basis of his study of Melville, Crane, London, Hemingway, Matthiessen, and ten lesser-known sea-writers, Bert Bender argues that the tradition of American sea fiction did not end with the opening of the western frontier and the replacement of sailing ships by steamers. Rather, he demonstrates its continuity and vitality, identifying a central vision within the tradition and showing how particular authors draw from, transform, and contribute to it. What is most distinctive about American sea fiction, Bender contends, is its visionary, often mystical, response to the biological world and to man's perceived place in the larger universe. When Melville envisioned the sea as the essential element of life, indeed as life itself, he changed the course of American sea fiction by introducing the relevance of biological thought. But his meditations on the whale and "the ungraspable phantom of life" project a different reality from that envisioned by his successors. In American sea fiction after Melville, the influence of Origin of Species is as powerful as that of Moby Dick or the theme of sailing ships being displaced by steam. The ideal of brotherhood so central to American sea fiction was severely compromised by the biological reality of a competitive, warring nature. Twentieth-century sea fiction has continued to center on the biological world and address the possibility of democratic brotherhood, but the issues were fundamentally changed by Darwin's theories. This book will be a valuable source for students and scholars of American literature and will interest readers of sea fiction.

The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution

The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution PDF

Author: Sam Willis

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2016-02-15

Total Pages: 672

ISBN-13: 0393248836

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A fascinating naval perspective on one of the greatest of all historical conundrums: How did thirteen isolated colonies, which in 1775 began a war with Britain without a navy or an army, win their independence from the greatest naval and military power on earth? The American Revolution involved a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no fewer than twenty-two navies fighting on five oceans—to say nothing of rivers and lakes. In no other war were so many large-scale fleet battles fought, one of which was the most strategically significant naval battle in all of British, French, and American history. Simultaneous naval campaigns were fought in the English Channel, the North and Mid-Atlantic, the Mediterranean, off South Africa, in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the North Sea and, of course, off the eastern seaboard of America. Not until the Second World War would any nation actively fight in so many different theaters. In The Struggle for Sea Power, Sam Willis traces every key military event in the path to American independence from a naval perspective, and he also brings this important viewpoint to bear on economic, political, and social developments that were fundamental to the success of the Revolution. In doing so Willis offers valuable new insights into American, British, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Russian history. This unique account of the American Revolution gives us a new understanding of the influence of sea power upon history, of the American path to independence, and of the rise and fall of the British Empire.

To Master the Boundless Sea

To Master the Boundless Sea PDF

Author: Jason W. Smith

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-04-13

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1469640457

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As the United States grew into an empire in the late nineteenth century, notions like "sea power" derived not only from fleets, bases, and decisive battles but also from a scientific effort to understand and master the ocean environment. Beginning in the early nineteenth century and concluding in the first years of the twentieth, Jason W. Smith tells the story of the rise of the U.S. Navy and the emergence of American ocean empire through its struggle to control nature. In vividly told sketches of exploration, naval officers, war, and, most significantly, the ocean environment, Smith draws together insights from environmental, maritime, military, and naval history, and the history of science and cartography, placing the U.S. Navy's scientific efforts within a broader cultural context. By recasting and deepening our understanding of the U.S. Navy and the United States at sea, Smith brings to the fore the overlooked work of naval hydrographers, surveyors, and cartographers. In the nautical chart's soundings, names, symbols, and embedded narratives, Smith recounts the largely untold story of a young nation looking to extend its power over the boundless sea.

Dominion from Sea to Sea

Dominion from Sea to Sea PDF

Author: Bruce Cumings

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2009-11-17

Total Pages: 672

ISBN-13: 0300154976

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America is the first world power to inhabit an immense land mass open at both ends to the world’s two largest oceans—the Atlantic and the Pacific. This gives America a great competitive advantage often overlooked by Atlanticists, whose focus remains overwhelmingly fixed on America’s relationship with Europe. Bruce Cumings challenges the Atlanticist perspective in this innovative new history, arguing that relations with Asia influenced our history greatly. Cumings chronicles how the movement westward, from the Middle West to the Pacific, has shaped America’s industrial, technological, military, and global rise to power. He unites domestic and international history, international relations, and political economy to demonstrate how technological change and sharp economic growth have created a truly bicoastal national economy that has led the world for more than a century. Cumings emphasizes the importance of American encounters with Mexico, the Philippines, and the nations of East Asia. The result is a wonderfully integrative history that advances a strong argument for a dual approach to American history incorporating both Atlanticist and Pacificist perspectives.

American Sea Writing

American Sea Writing PDF

Author: Peter Neill

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13:

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This anthology of essays captures the full sweep of America's maritime experience, with narratives from voyagers from the 17th century to the 20th century. Included are writings from Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, and more.

People of the Sea

People of the Sea PDF

Author: W. Michael Gear

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1994-09-15

Total Pages: 581

ISBN-13: 0812507452

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The story of life and love, death and adventure in North America eleven thousand years ago.