Davis, Jack E.

"Tells the larger narrative of the American Sea--from the sportfish that brought the earliest tourists to Gulf shores to Hollywood's engagement with the first offshore oil wells"--Dust jacket.

"The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you're not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as "majestic" and "noble," yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the nation's founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species, [the author] contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others, whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides, twice pushed Haliaeetus leucocephalus to the brink of extinction"--Adapted from publisher description.

When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America?s sea?bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience?and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the twenty-first century.

A homeowner remembers visits from all the animals whose tracks, feathers, and other traces are visible--except for the moose whose prints are everywhere.