Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
Audiobook10 hours
The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History
Written by John S. Sledge
Narrated by Tom Perkins
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
()
About this audiobook
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 Leon, 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 Cortes.
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 Cortes.
Author
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 six previous 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.
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Reviews for The Gulf of Mexico
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I had to read 2 chapters of this book for a university class. I continued to read the entire book because it was wonderfully written and so informative about the coast I now live on. If you are a natural and social history buff I suggest you read it. It can sometimes get a little much on the maritime history (although that is the point of the book) and talking of ships and boats I know nothing about but I learned so much.