My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Written by an environmental historian, The Gulf tells the stories of the impact the Gulf has had on America, but more so on the impacts Americans have had on the Gulf. As the book progresses through it's 530 pages and reaches the twentieth century, the story takes on a grimmer tone as those impacts become more and more detrimental.
The book is divided into four parts, and progresses from the days of the conquistadors up to the present day. I really enjoyed the history and was saddened (and maddened) by the chronicling of our agriculture and industry's impacts on the Gulf in the second half of the book.
This reminded me a lot of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, which I read a couple of years back, but in that book the focus is more directly on man's impact on nature, and is more reportorial, whereas this book takes a broader, historian's view.