Download or read book Chesapeake Requiem written by Earl Swift and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post,NPR, Outside,Smithsonian,Bloomberg, Science Friday, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, and Kirkus "BEAUTIFUL, HAUNTING AND TRUE." — Hampton Sides • “GORGEOUS. A TRULY REMARKABLE BOOK.” — Beth Macy • "GRIPPING. FANTASTIC." — Outside • "CAPTIVATING." — Washington Post • "POWERFUL." — Bill McKibben • "VIVID. HARROWING AND MOVING." — Science • "A MASTERFUL NARRATIVE." — Christian Science Monitor • "THE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR." — Stephen L. Carter/Bloomberg Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. Mapped by John Smith in 1608, settled during the American Revolution, the tiny sliver of mud is home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence, with one foot in the 21st century and another in times long passed. They are separated from their countrymen by the nation’s largest estuary, and a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water—the same water that for generations has made Tangier’s fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the rightly prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world. Yet for all of its long history, and despite its tenacity, Tangier is disappearing. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island day by day, wave by wave. It has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850, and still its shoreline retreats by fifteen feet a year—meaning this storied place will likely succumb first among U.S. towns to the effects of climate change. Experts reckon that, barring heroic intervention by the federal government, islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times. Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate look at the island’s past, present and tenuous future, by an acclaimed journalist who spent much of the past two years living among Tangier’s people, crabbing and oystering with its watermen, and observing its long traditions and odd ways. What emerges is the poignant tale of a world that has, quite nearly, gone by—and a leading-edge report on the coming fate of countless coastal communities.
Download or read book The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake written by William B. Cronin and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2005-06-17 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An appendix documents the many small islands that have dropped entirely from view since the seventeenth century.
Download or read book Beautiful Swimmers written by William W. Warner and published by Little Brown. This book was released on 1976 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combines a natural history of the Atlantic blue crab with an historical and ecological study of Chesapeake Bay and a chronicle of the commercial crabber's year
Download or read book Life in the Chesapeake Bay written by Alice Jane Lippson and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2006-06-19 with total page 858 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The best-written and best-illustrated guide ever about a North American tidal estuary. It is the model for all future coastal nature guides.” —Whole Earth Review Life in the Chesapeake Bay is the most important book ever published on America’s largest estuary. Since publication of the first edition in 1984, tens of thousands of naturalists, boaters, fishermen, and conservationists have relied on the book’s descriptions of the Bay’s plants, animals, and diverse habitats. Superbly illustrated and clearly written, this acclaimed guide describes hundreds of plants and animals and their habitats, from diamondback terrapins to blue crabs to hornshell snails. Now in its third edition, the book has been updated with a new gallery of thirty-nine color photographs and dozens of new species descriptions and illustrations. The new edition retains the charm of an engaging classic while adding a decade of new research. This classic guide to the plants and animals of the Chesapeake Bay will appeal to a variety of readers—year-round residents and summer vacationers, professional biologists and amateur scientists, conservationists and sportsmen. “Handsome, generously illustrated . . . All of the Bay’s richness is catalogued here.” —The Washington Post Book World “A story book, a field guide and a reference work, and anyone interested in fishing, ecology, or our bay should own it.” —The Baltimore Sun “The region’s quintessential field and reference guide.” —Chesapeake Life Magazine “One of the most popular, well written, and useful guides to the Chesapeake.” —Northeastern Naturalist
Download or read book Journey on the James written by Earl Swift and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2014-12-19 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its beginnings as a trickle of icy water in Virginia's northwest corner to its miles-wide mouth at Hampton Roads, the James River has witnessed more recorded history than any other feature of the American landscape -- as home to the continent's first successful English settlement, highway for Native Americans and early colonists, battleground in the Revolution and the Civil War, and birthplace of America's twentieth-century navy. In 1998, restless in his job as a reporter for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Earl Swift landed an assignment traveling the entire length of the James. He hadn't been in a canoe since his days as a Boy Scout, and he knew that the river boasts whitewater, not to mention man-made obstacles, to challenge even experienced paddlers. But reinforced by Pilot photographer Ian Martin and a lot of freeze-dried food and beer, Swift set out to immerse himself -- he hoped not literally -- in the river and its history. What Swift survived to bring us is this engrossing chronicle of three weeks in a fourteen-foot plastic canoe and four hundred years in the life of Virginia. Fueled by humor and a dauntless curiosity about the land, buildings, and people on the banks, and anchored by his sidekick Martin -- whose photographs accompany the text -- Swift points his bow through the ghosts of a frontier past, past Confederate forts and POW camps, antebellum mills, ruined canals, vanished towns, and effluent-spewing industry. Along the banks, lonely meadowlands alternate with suburbs and power plants, marinas and the gleaming skyscrapers of Richmond's New South downtown. Enduring dunkings, wolf spiders, near-arrest, channel fever, and twenty-knot winds, Swift makes it to the Chesapeake Bay. Readers who accompany him through his Journey on the James will come away with the accumulated pleasure, if not the bruises and mud, of four hundred miles of adventure and history in the life of one of America's great watersheds.
Download or read book Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay written by Jamie L.H. Goodall and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-24 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An epic history of piracy . . . Goodall explores the role of these legendary rebels and describes the fine line between piracy and privateering.” —WYPR The story of Chesapeake pirates and patriots begins with a land dispute and ends with the untimely death of an oyster dredger at the hands of the Maryland Oyster Navy. From the golden age of piracy to Confederate privateers and oyster pirates, the maritime communities of the Chesapeake Bay are intimately tied to a fascinating history of intrigue, plunder and illicit commerce raiding. Author Jamie L.H. Goodall introduces infamous men like Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and “Black Sam” Bellamy, as well as lesser-known local figures like Gus Price and Berkeley Muse, whose tales of piracy are legendary from the harbor of Baltimore to the shores of Cape Charles. “Rather than an unchanging monolith, Goodall creates a narrative filled with dynamic movement and exchange between the characters, setting, conflict, and resolution of her story. Goodall positioned this narrative to be successful on different levels.” —International Social Science Review
Download or read book The Watermen of the Chesapeake Bay written by John Hurt Whitehead and published by Cornell Maritime Press/Tidewater Publishers. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Photographs depict the daily life of Chesapeake Bay fisherman and are accompanied by the comments and observations of the watermen
Download or read book The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay written by John Wennersten and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2007 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades after the Civil War, Chesapeake Bay became the scene of a life and death struggle to harvest the oyster.
Download or read book Across the Airless Wilds written by Earl Swift and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "THRILLING. ... Up-end[s] the Apollo narrative entirely." —The Times (London) A "brilliantly observed" (Newsweek) and "endlessly fascinating" (WSJ) rediscovery of the final Apollo moon landings, revealing why these extraordinary yet overshadowed missions—distinguished by the use of the revolutionary lunar roving vehicle—deserve to be celebrated as the pinnacle of human adventure and exploration. One of The Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of the Month 8:36 P.M. EST, December 12, 1972: Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt braked to a stop alongside Nansen Crater, keenly aware that they were far, far from home. They had flown nearly a quarter-million miles to the man in the moon’s left eye, landed at its edge, and then driven five miles in to this desolate, boulder-strewn landscape. As they gathered samples, they strode at the outermost edge of mankind’s travels. This place, this moment, marked the extreme of exploration for a species born to wander. A few feet away sat the machine that made the achievement possible: an electric go-cart that folded like a business letter, weighed less than eighty pounds in the moon’s reduced gravity, and muscled its way up mountains, around craters, and over undulating plains on America’s last three ventures to the lunar surface. In the decades since, the exploits of the astronauts on those final expeditions have dimmed in the shadow cast by the first moon landing. But Apollo 11 was but a prelude to what came later: while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin trod a sliver of flat lunar desert smaller than a football field, Apollos 15, 16, and 17 each commanded a mountainous area the size of Manhattan. All told, their crews traveled fifty-six miles, and brought deep science and a far more swashbuckling style of exploration to the moon. And they triumphed for one very American reason: they drove. In this fast-moving history of the rover and the adventures it ignited, Earl Swift puts the reader alongside the men who dreamed of driving on the moon and designed and built the vehicle, troubleshot its flaws, and drove it on the moon’s surface. Finally shining a deserved spotlight on these overlooked characters and the missions they created, Across the Airless Wilds is a celebration of human genius, perseverance, and daring.
Download or read book Schooner Sultana written by Drew McMullen and published by Cornell Maritime Press/Tidewater Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: McMullen (former project director for the Sultana and photographer Niemeyer tell the story of the Sultana, a reproduction of an 18th- century schooner designed to be a floating classroom on the Chesapeake Bay. The text and color photographs describe the day-to-day construction of the vessel and the shipwrights, craftspeople, and volunteers who helped to complete it. Other chapters provide information about the original ship purchased by the British Navy for use as a revenue schooner to patrol East Coast harbors. Oversize: 9.5x12.5". Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Chesapeake written by James A. Michener and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 1026 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic novel, James A. Michener brings his grand epic tradition to bear on the four-hundred-year saga of America’s Eastern Shore, from its Native American roots to the modern age. In the early 1600s, young Edmund Steed is desperate to escape religious persecution in England. After joining Captain John Smith on a harrowing journey across the Atlantic, Steed makes a life for himself in the New World, establishing a remarkable dynasty that parallels the emergence of America. Through the extraordinary tale of one man’s dream, Michener tells intertwining stories of family and national heritage, introducing us along the way to Quakers, pirates, planters, slaves, abolitionists, and notorious politicians, all making their way through American history in the common pursuit of freedom. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii. Praise for Chesapeake “Another of James Michener’s great mines of narrative, character and lore.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] marvelous panorama of history seen in the lives of symbolic people of the ages . . . An emotionally and intellectually appealing book.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Michener’s most ambitious work of fiction in theme and scope.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “Magnificently written . . . one of those rare novels that is enthusiastically passed from friend to friend.”—Associated Press
Download or read book Auto Biography written by Earl Swift and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant blend of Shop Class as Soulcraft and The Orchid Thief, Earl Swift's wise, funny, and captivating Auto Biography follows an outlaw auto dealer as he struggles to save a rusted '57 Chevy—a car that has already passed through twelve pairs of hands before his—while financial ruin, government bureaucrats and the FBI close in on him. Slumped among hundreds of other decrepit hulks on a treeless, windswept moor in eastern North Carolina, the Chevy evokes none of the Jet Age mystique that made it the most beloved car to ever roll off an assembly line. It's open to the rain. Birds nest in its seats. Officials of the surrounding county consider it junk. To Tommy Arney, it's anything but: It's a fossil of the twentieth-century American experience, of a place and a people utterly devoted to the automobile and changed by it in myriad ways. It's a piece of history—especially so because its flaking skin conceals a rare asset: a complete provenance, stretching back more than fifty years. So, hassled by a growing assortment of challengers, the Chevy's thirteenth owner—an orphan, grade-school dropout and rounder, a felon arrested seventy-odd times, and a man who's been written off as a ruin himself--embarks on a mission to save the car and preserve long record of human experience it carries in its steel and upholstery. Written for both gearheads and Sunday drivers, Auto Biography charts the shifting nature of the American Dream and our strange and abiding relationship with the automobile, through an iconic classic and an improbable, unforgettable hero.
Download or read book The Chesapeake Bride written by Mariah Stewart and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Newly divorced architect Cassidy Logan plans to build a house on historic Cannonball Island in the Chesapeake Bay, where wanderer Owen Parker has decided to return home. Pursuing Cassidy will force Owen to face the reasons he avoided relationships in the past.
Download or read book Crab s Hole written by Anne Hughes Jander and published by Literary House Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Literary House Press at Washington College publishes a range of general interest books and scholarly monographs. Its publications present literary, scientific, historic, journalistic, environmental, and public policy writings of the Chesapeake Bay region. As publisher for Washington College, the press also publishes scholarly monographs written by faculty or taken from lecture series at the college. In addition, Literary House Press publishes works of literary merit without regard to subject or setting. Through the voice of their mother, the author of this enchanting memoir, the Jander family speaks to us across half-a-century about a world that is no more. Running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity were little more than dreams when the Jander family settled on tiny Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. To leave the pressures of urban life behind, the Janders moved to the island during World War II and remained there as the children grew up and departed. Anne Jander began her memoir in 1943 and completed it in 1952. She died ten years later, and her family decided, after another thirty years, to seek its publication.
Download or read book The Big Roads written by Earl Swift and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the twists and turns of one of America’s great infrastructure projects with this “engrossing history of the creation of the U.S. interstate system” (Los Angeles Times). It’s become a part of the landscape that we take for granted, the site of rumbling eighteen-wheelers and roadside rest stops, a familiar route for commuters and vacationing families. But during the twentieth century, the interstate highway system dramatically changed the face of our nation. These interconnected roads—over 47,000 miles of them—are man-made wonders, economic pipelines, agents of sprawl, uniquely American symbols of escape and freedom, and an unrivaled public works accomplishment. Though officially named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, this network of roadways has origins that reach all the way back to the World War I era, and The Big Roads—“the first thorough history of the expressway system” (The Washington Post)—tells the full story of how they came to be. From the speed demon who inspired a primitive web of dirt auto trails to the largely forgotten technocrats who planned the system years before Ike reached the White House to the city dwellers who resisted the concrete juggernaut when it bore down on their neighborhoods, this book reveals both the massive scale of this government engineering project, and the individual lives that have been transformed by it. A fast-paced history filled with fascinating detours, “the book is a road geek’s treasure—and everyone who travels the highways ought to know these stories” (Kirkus Reviews).
Download or read book A Village with My Name written by Scott Tong and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor). When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global. A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today. “Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times “Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)
Download or read book Home Waters written by Gary Soucie and published by Touchstone. This book was released on 1991 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A host of writers take readers to their favorite fishing spots in a captivating collection of 55 pieces, many written especially for this book. Reflecting every nuance of the fly-fishing experience, culled from more than 100 years of writing, this is the book fly-fishers will want to come home to.
