Shadows on the Gulf A Journey through Our Last Great Wetland

by Jacobsen, Rowan

• ISBN13: 9781608195817
• ISBN10: 1608195813
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-26
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Summary

While other books play the blame game of what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon and who is responsible,Shadows on the Gulfoffers a surprising, harder truth: As bad as the oil spill was, it doesn't touch the damage done to the Gulf every year by what one expert in the book calls "A 100-year catastrophe." Readers who believe they know the story will find their thinking changed byShadows'surprising perspective: At the height of BP's dispersant madness, the amount sprayed each day merely equaled the amount of dispersant that washes down the Mississippi from the Heartland's dishwashers and washing machines. The Gulf's shrimpers have damaged the region's ecology as much BP has. The acres of marsh destroyed by oil slicks can't compare to the amount that disappears in every hurricane, thanks to the work of the Army Corp of Engineers. And even if we save every mile of beach and wetland from the oil spill, the entire Mississippi Delta will still be lost in the next forty years and New Orleans will sink beneath the waves, the American Atlantis. Shadows on the Gulfreveals the key players in this catastrophe and explains why it will affect quality of life for us all. In doing so, it celebrates the little-recognized global wonder in our backyard. Not only are the Gulf's wetlands the best oyster reefs and fish nurseries in the world, they also provide critical habitat to most of America's migratory songbirds and waterfowl, as well as a home base for the energy and shipping industries. If the Gulf is allowed to fail, the effects will ripple across America. And fail it will, unless a national effort is made to save it.

Author Biography

Rowan Jacobsen is the James Beard Award- winning author of
A Geography of Oysters, Fruitless
Fall, The Living Shore, and
American Terroir. He has written about food,
place, and the natural world for Harper's,
Newsweek, Eating Well, and
others, and his commentaries on the Gulf crisis have appeared in
Outside magazine and the New York
Times and on MSNBC. He was raised in Florida and attended
school on the Gulf Coast.

Table of Contents

Falling for the Gulf	p. 1
The Last Hunter-Gatherers in America	p. 10
How Good It Was	p. 21
The Blackest Sauce	p. 32
ôThe Unthinkable Has Become Thinkableö	p. 44
Sailing the Slick	p. 71
Of Eels, Whales, and Repercussions	p. 89
The Last Days of Isle de Jean Charles	p. 108
Ten Thousand Cuts	p. 131
Placelessness	p. 146
BP Is My Copilot	p. 167
Creating Land and Other Minor Miracles	p. 179
The Most Important River You've Never Heard Of	p. 190
Epilogue: Thanksgiving	p. 201
Acknowledgments	p. 207
Sources	p. 209
Index	p. 225
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.