Phew. Four months after starting this deeply researched and richly written tome, I turned the last page. Ironically, I did so after having spent my first weekend in Cedar Key, Florida, an island which Pulitzer Prize winner Jack E. Davis uses as an example of a current success story of gulf coastal sustainability and reasonableness.

With tens of pages of citations, this book was not written quickly or haphazardly. Honestly, knowing the Gulf is a place near to Davis’ heart, a place he grew up on as a boy, it’s hard to believe he actually finished it.

The man-driven destruction of the Gulf, its coastline, its estuaries and the rivers which flow into it is legendary. And almost all of it is related to capitalism and industry or the direct result of greed. Dead zones, red tide, algae blooms….all man-made disasters.