Toward The Gulf

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 largest estuary in the world, the Gulf of St Lawrence is defined broadly by an ecology that stretches from the upper reaches of the St Lawrence River to the Gulf Stream, and by a web of influences that reach from the heart of the continent to northern Europe. For more than a millennium, the gulf's strategic location and rich marine resources have made it a destination and a gateway, a cockpit and a crossroads, and a highway and a home. From Vinland the Good to the novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the Gulf has haunted the Western imagination. A transborder collaboration between Canadian and American scholars, The Greater Gulf represents the first concerted exploration of the environmental history – marine and terrestrial – of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Contributors tell many histories of a place that has been fished, fought over, explored, and exploited. The essays' defining themes resonate in today's charged atmosphere of quickening climate change as they recount stories of resilience played against ecological fragility, resistance at odds with accommodation, considered versus reckless exploitation, and real, imagined, and imposed identities. Reconsidering perceptions about borders and the spaces between and across land and sea, The Greater Gulf draws attention to a central place and part of North Atlantic and North American history. Contributors include Rainer Baehre (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Jack Bouchard (Folger Institute), Claire Campbell (Bucknell University), Caitlin Charman (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Jack Little (Simon Fraser University), Edward MacDonald (University of Prince Edward Island), Matthew McKenzie (University of Connecticut), Suzanne Morton (McGill University), Brian Payne (Bridgewater State University), John G. Reid (St. Mary's University), and Daniel Soucier (University of Maine).

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The Gulf is a major global destination for migrant workers, with a majority of these workers coming from South Asia. In this book, a team of international contributors examine the often-overlooked complex governance of this migration corridor. Going beyond state-centric analysis, the contributors present a multi-layered account of the ‘migration governance complex.’ They offer insights not only into the actors involved in the different components of migration governance, but also into the varying ways of interpreting and explaining the meaning and value of these interactions. Together, they enable readers to better understand migration in this important region, while also providing a model for analyzing global migration governance in practice in different parts of the world.

A must-read for Gulf Coast scientists, naturalists, and residents . . . From Florida to Mexico and along the shores of Cuba, the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico are vulnerable to sea-level rise because of their fragile and low-lying shorelines and adjacent coastal environments. In addition to wetlands, river deltas, beaches, and barrier islands, millions of people who live and work along the Gulf coast are susceptible to the affects of both intense storms in the short term and a gradual rise in sea level over the longer term. While global warming headlines any current discussion of this topic and is certainly a major factor in sea-level change, it is not the only factor. Earthquakes and other crustal shifts, the El Niño/La Niña phenomena, river impoundment and sedimentation, tides, and weather can all affect local, regional, and global sea levels. In Sea-Level Change in the Gulf of Mexico, Richard A. Davis Jr. looks at the various causes and effects of rising and falling sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico, beginning with the Gulf’s geological birth over 100 million years ago, and focusing on the last 20,000 years, when global sea levels began rising as the glaciers of the last major ice age melted. Davis reviews the current situation, especially regarding beach erosion and loss of wetlands, and offers a preview of the future, when the Gulf Coast will change markedly as the twenty-first century progresses. Amply illustrated and written in a clear, straightforward style, Sea-Level Change in the Gulf of Mexico is a valuable resource for anyone who cares deeply about understanding the past, present, and future of life along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

One of Foreign Policy's Best Five Books of 2013, chosen by Marc Lynch of The Middle East Channel Beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and concluding with the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings, Frederic M. Wehrey investigates the roots of the Shi'a-Sunni divide now dominating the Persian Gulf's political landscape. Focusing on three Gulf states affected most by sectarian tensions—Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait—Wehrey identifies the factors that have exacerbated or tempered sectarianism, including domestic political institutions, the media, clerical establishments, and the contagion effect of external regional events, such as the Iraq war, the 2006 Lebanon conflict, the Arab uprisings, and Syria's civil war. In addition to his analysis, Wehrey builds a historical narrative of Shi'a activism in the Arab Gulf since 2003, linking regional events to the development of local Shi'a strategies and attitudes toward citizenship, political reform, and transnational identity. He finds that, while the Gulf Shi'a were inspired by their coreligionists in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, they ultimately pursued greater rights through a nonsectarian, nationalist approach. He also discovers that sectarianism in the region has largely been the product of the institutional weaknesses of Gulf states, leading to excessive alarm by entrenched Sunni elites and calculated attempts by regimes to discredit Shi'a political actors as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or Lebanese Hizballah. Wehrey conducts interviews with nearly every major Shi'a leader, opinion shaper, and activist in the Gulf Arab states, as well as prominent Sunni voices, and consults diverse Arabic-language sources.

"The storm has entered the Gulf." For those who live or travel near the Gulf of Mexico, this ominous announcement commands attention, especially given the frequency and force of hurricane strikes in recent years. Since 2004, the shores around the Gulf of Mexico have been in the crosshairs for an increasing number of hurricanes and tropical storms, including Charley and Wilma in southwestern Florida and Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike along the northern Gulf coast from Panama City to near Galveston. In this definitive guide, climatologists Barry D. Keim and Robert A. Muller examine the big picture of Gulf hurricanes -- from the 1800s to the present and from Key West, Florida, to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula -- providing an extraordinary compilation and interpretation of the entire region's hurricane and tropical storm history. Drawing from their own research and from National Hurricane Center records, Keim and Muller examine numerous individual Gulf storms, considering each hurricane's origin, oceanic and atmospheric influences, seasonality, track, intensity, size, point of landfall, storm surge, and impact on life, property, and the environment. They describe the unique features of the Gulf that influence the development of hurricanes, such as the loop current and its eddies, and identify areas of the coastline that are more or less vulnerable because of physical environment, socioeconomic environment, or both. They point out that the increase in population along the Gulf Coast over the past century has led to a rise in hurricane damage as once sparse coastlines are now lined with residents, commerce, and industry. In addition, they assess predicted hurricane activity for coming years in light of competing climate theories as well as cyclical patterns over the past century. Keim and Muller begin their book by scrutinizing the Gulf's deadliest storm, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, whose victims received little to no warning of its approach. They then retrace 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the most costly storm, using NHC advisories and reports. Their comparison of these two catastrophic events shows that despite 105 years of tremendous technological advances, hurricanes remain ultimately rather unpredictable and human warning, readiness, and response measures continue to be imperfect. Keim and Muller also detail other memorable Gulf storms -- the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, Audrey, Betsy, Camille, Gilbert, Andrew, Wilma, and more -- and give the hurricane strike records from 1901 to 2005 at thirty locations around the Gulf. They extend the New Orleans hurricane strike record back to the middle of the nineteenth century, providing key insight into comparisons of storm activities during the two centuries. An epilogue summarizes the destructive 2008 hurricane season, including storms Dolly, Gustav, and Ike. Plentiful maps, charts, tables, graphs, and photos, along with anecdotal observations and an informative text, make Hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico a captivating and useful volume for Gulf residents, storm trackers, or anyone fascinated by the weather.

This book is a guide to the geology of Florida's Gulf Coast.