The Gulf of Mexico, John S. Sledge
The Gulf of Mexico, John S. Sledge
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The Gulf of Mexico
A Maritime History

Author: John S. Sledge

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 10 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/26/2019

Synopsis

The Gulf of Mexico presents a compelling, salt-streaked narrative of the earth's tenth largest body of water. In this beautifully written volume, John S. Sledge explores the people, ships, and cities that have made the Gulf's human history and culture so rich. Many famous figures who sailed the Gulf's viridian waters are highlighted, including Ponce de León, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, Francis Drake, Elizabeth Agassiz, Ernest Hemingway, and Charles Dwight Sigsbee. Sledge also introduces a fascinating array of people connected to maritime life in the Gulf, among them Maya priests, French pirates, African American stevedores, and Greek sponge divers.

Gulf events of global historical importance are detailed, such as the only defeat of armed and armored steamships by wooden sailing vessels, the first accurate deep-sea survey and bathymetric map of any ocean basin, the development of shipping containers by a former truck driver frustrated with antiquated loading practices, and the worst environmental disaster in American annals.

Occasionally shifting focus ashore, Sledge explains how people representing a gumbo of ethnicities built some of the world's most exotic cities—Havana, New Orleans, and oft-besieged Veracruz, Mexico's oldest city, founded in 1519 by Hernán Cortés.

About John S. Sledge

John S. Sledge is senior architectural historian for the Mobile Historic Development Commission and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He holds a bachelor's degree in history and Spanish from Auburn University and a master's in historic preservation from Middle Tennessee State University. Sledge is the author of several books, including Southern Bound: A Gulf Coast Journalist on Books, Writers, and Literary Pilgrimages of the Heart, The Mobile River, and These Rugged Days: Alabama in the Civil War.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Tim

Really good overview of the human history of the Gulf of Mexico from Pre-Columbian times through the second decade of the twenty-first century. It’s a good companion to _The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea_ by Jack Emerson Davis, as while _The Gulf_ focuses on environmental history, this work fo......more

Goodreads review by Rachel

Closer to what I've been looking for in a book about history than most I've read recently. History isn't just names and dates; it's personages and stories that made them make the decisions they did - combined with the facts. Not entirely anecdotal, but more so than a dry recitation. This book was fu......more

Goodreads review by Cindy

Since 1550 this body of water, which contains over 600 quadrillion gallons and ranks tenth in size worldwide, has been known as el Golfo de Mexico or the Gulf of Mexico. It began to form when the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart approximately 200,000,000 years ago, but the oval-like shape we recog......more

Goodreads review by Scott

(Audiobook) A solid but not spectacular work of history about the Gulf of Mexico, this work attempts to offer a combination of environmental, ecological, political and economic history of this key body of water for North and Latin America. It can be enlightening at points and is generally readable.......more

Goodreads review by Eric

I saw an endorsement of this book in a periodical I read regularly, and I thought they rated if favorable enough the I wouldn't mind owning a copy. I should have let it be - not because it was poorly done, but because I recently finished John E. Davis' book, "The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea,......more

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