The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

Winner of 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History: "An important environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that brings crucial attention to Earth’s 10th-largest body of water, one of the planet’s most diverse and productive marine ecosystems.
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).