We asked our fellow Oyster Recovery Partnership staffers to recommend a good summer read – a book that any Chesapeake Bay or oyster enthusiast is sure to love. And they delivered. We feel any of these books would be an ideal companion for your days under an umbrella on your patio, lounging at the beach, or floating in a raft on the shore.
An Island Out of Time: A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake
A classic of Chesapeake Bay literature, Tom Horton’s An Island Out of Time chronicles the three years Horton and his family spent on Smith Island, a marshy archipelago in the middle of Maryland’s famous estuary. The result is an intimate portrait of a deeply traditional community that lived much as their ancestors did three hundred years before, attuned to the habits of blue crab, oyster, and waterfowl. Horton brings the story of Smith Island, and its people, up to the present.
Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay
William Warner exhibits his skill as a naturalist and as a writer in this Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the pugnacious Atlantic blue crab and of its Chesapeake Bay territory.
Chesapeake Oysters: The Bay’s Foundation and Future (American Palate)
Crassostrea virginica, the eastern oyster. These humble bivalves are the living bones of the Chesapeake and the ecological and historical lifeblood of the region. When colonists first sailed these impossibly abundant shores, they described massive shoals of foot-long oysters. But the bottomless appetite of the Gilded Age and great fleets of skipjacks took their toll. Disease, environmental pressures and overconsumption decimated the population by the end of the twentieth century. While Virginia turned to bottom-leasing, passionate debate continues in Maryland among scientists and oystermen whether aquaculture or wild harvesting is the better way forward. Today, boutique oyster farming in the Bay is sustainably meeting the culinary demand of a new generation of connoisseurs. With careful research and interviews with experts, author Kate Livie presents this dynamic story and a glimpse of what the future may hold.
Chesapeake: A Novel
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.
Just Passing Through
An intimate, unusual look at the Chesapeake Bay through beautiful images by renowned photographer, the late Marion Warren, and insightful poetry by award-winning author Mick Blackistone. Visit commercial watermen and farmers, catch and eat crabs and fish, walk deserted streets and homey lanes, and chat, build, and live with the people of the Chesapeake Bay region. Moments in time come alive in this book, revealing the warmth and spirit of living that is timeless in today s world. Capturing everyday thoughts and presenting hidden treasures located in changing communities, this trip through Maryland s best-kept secret creates images for readers regardless of where they live.
Oyster: A Gastronomic History (with Recipes)
Drew Smith’s Oyster: A Gastronomic History offers readers a global view of the oyster, tracing its role in cooking, art, literature, and politics from the dawn of time to the present day. Oysters have inspired chefs, painters, and writers alike, have sustained communities financially and ecologically, and have loomed large in legend and history. Using the oyster as the central theme, Smith has organized the book around time periods and geographical locations, looking at the oyster’s influence through colorful anecdotes, eye-opening scientific facts, and a wide array of visuals. The book also includes fifty recipes—traditional country dishes and contemporary examples from some of the best restaurants in the world. Renowned French chef Raymond Blanc calls Oyster “a brilliant crusade for the oyster that shows how food has shaped our history, art, literature, law-making, culture, and of course love-making and cuisine.”
Run to Leeward
The story of a remarkable man and a great adventure in the last days of sail in the Cheapeake Bay.
Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm
In March of 2009, Erin Byers Murray ditched her pampered city girl lifestyle and convinced the rowdy and mostly male crew at Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury, Massachusetts, to let a completely unprepared, aquaculture-illiterate food and lifestyle writer work for them for 12 months to learn the business of oysters. SHUCKED is part love letter, part memoir and part documentary about the world’s most beloved bivalves. An in-depth look at the work that goes into getting oysters from farm to table, SHUCKED shows Erin’s full-circle journey through the modern day oyster farming process and tells a dynamic story about the people who grow our food, and the cutting-edge community of weathered New England oyster farmers who are defying convention and looking ahead. The narrative also interweaves Erin’s personal story―the tale of how a technology-obsessed workaholic learns to slow life down a little bit and starts to enjoy getting her hands dirty (and cold). This is a book for oyster lovers everywhere, but also a great read for locavores and foodies in general.
Skipjack: The Story of America’s Last Sailing Oystermen
In Skipjack, Christopher White spends a pivotal year with three memorable captains as they battle man and nature to control the fate of their island villages and oyster fleet. Through these lively characters, White paints a vivid picture of life on a skipjack, a wooden oystering sailboat. But this last vestige of American sailing culture is rapidly dying. These captains must set aside their rivalry to fight for their very livelihood. With so many obstacles, it is not certain the fleet will survive the season. Hinging on its success, the viability of the nation’s premiere estuary and the survival of a classic American town hang dangerously in the balance.
Dancing with the Tide: Watermen of the Chesapeake Bay
A certain mystique has always surrounded the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay. This book goes far toward defining it by taking the reader on a journey with the watermen as they harvest oysters, clams, fish, and crabs. The author was on board with the watermen, so he describes their work firsthand, including not only the practical details, but also the humorous and serious sides of a typical day. In documenting the work of the watermen, Blackistone tries to preserve what remains of their way of life. As fewer sons and daughters follow in the footsteps of their parents by working the water, the number of people who can convey the traditions of the watermen by oral history is gradually diminishing. Blackistone’s concern for the potential loss of an entire subculture inspired his research for this book. Dancing with the Tide chronicles what has changed for the watermen over the last decade: how the changing conditions of the bay and new regulations have impacted their work life, what declining harvests have meant to them, and what the new millennium might hold for them and their families. Blackistone also interviewed government officials, conservationists, and watermen’s association officers to incorporate other facets of this fascinating occupation which so captivates the public. Engaging photographs of the watermen at work highlight this documentary of a year in the life of these harvesters of the Chesapeake Bay.
“The Best of Times on the Chesapeake Bay” An Account of a Rock Hall Waterman
Captain Larry Simns has worked as a commercial fisherman in the waters of Maryland for nearly sixty years, serving as President of the Maryland Watermen’s Association since the 1970s. Through good and hard times, Simns has labored to keep working watermen profitable and relevant in spite of declining water quality and severe encroachment of prime fishing grounds. Here, find a funny, pointed, and candid portrait of one man’s journey to lead independent, hard-charging commercial fishermen. In chronological order, Larry shares 65 stories reflecting memories of his “”best of times.”
The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake
Scientists estimate that, until 1900, the water level of the Chesapeake Bay rose at the rate of three feet every thousand years. Alarmingly enough, the bay rose by one foot in the twentieth century alone, and for evidence of this dramatic change one need only observe the effects of rising water on the islands of the Chesapeake Bay, which slowly are slipping from sight.
A retired oceanographer who first conducted research on the bay in the 1950s, William B. Cronin here supplies a survey of the changing fortunes of these forty-odd islands, from Garrett in the north to Gwynn and James islands to the south. Cronin’s historical and scientific tour outlines their erosion, their loss of marshland, and the rich if changing human experience they have supported for generations. Historic nautical charts, compared to current data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, leave no doubt of the crisis many of the islands face. On one, Holland, rising water in the late 1910s forced townspeople to move their houses by barge to the mainland. On another, Barren, a sizable hunting lodge housed guests as late as the 1970s but by 1985 had become a wreck beneath the water. An appendix documents the many small islands that have dropped entirely from view since the seventeenth century.
The Essential Oyster: A Salty Appreciation of Taste and Temptation
With lavish four-color photos throughout by renowned photographer David Malosh, The Essential Oyster is the definitive book for oyster-lovers everywhere, featuring stunning portraits, tasting notes, and backstories of all the top oysters, as well as recipes from America’s top oyster chefs and a guide to the best oyster bars. Spotlighting about a third of the more than three hundred different oysters in North America today–the unique, the historically significant, the flat-out yummiest–The Essential Oyster introduces the oyster culture and history of every region of North America, as well as overseas. There is no coastline from British Columbia to Baja, from New Iberia to New Brunswick, that isn’t producing great oysters. For the most part, these are deeper cupped, stronger shelled, finer flavored, and more stylish than their predecessors. Some have colorful stories to tell. Some have quirks. All have character. The Essential Oyster will help you find the best–and help you to cherish them better. That is what’s captured–and celebrated–in these pages.
The Oyster
The Chesapeake Bay oyster has changed little, if at all, in the century since this popular book was published. But the oyster harvest has fallen to its lowest level on record―from 15 million bushels at the turn of the century to fewer than 100,000 bushels in 1993. What was once the most bountiful source of oysters in the world has become nearly exhausted. More than a century ago, explains Kennedy T. Paynter Jr. in the introduction to the present volume, scientist and Maryland state official William K. Brooks warned that this day would come. The Oyster, first published in 1891, is a popular scientific account of what he knew and what he learned on the job. After describing the basic biology of the oyster, Brooks discusses its tremendous reproductive capacity, what it eats, how it lives, why it thrives in the Bay, and what role it plays in the Bay’s ecology. But The Oyster is more than a simple biology text. It is also a critical scientific review of oyster management in the Chesapeake Bay, commenting on and criticizing contemporary laws and regulatory practices―many of which are still in place today. The book is therefore as timely now as it was when first published. A new introduction from Kennedy T. Paynter Jr. brings the story into modern focus and again charges the reader with the responsibility of caring for the life of the Bay.
The Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay since 1880
In The Oyster Question, Christine Keiner applies perspectives of environmental, agricultural, political, and social history to examine the decline of Maryland’s iconic Chesapeake Bay oyster industry. Oystermen have held on to traditional ways of life, and some continue to use preindustrial methods, tonging oysters by hand from small boats. Others use more intensive tools, and thus it is commonly believed that a lack of regulation enabled oystermen to exploit the bay to the point of ruin.
But Keiner offers an opposing view in which state officials, scientists, and oystermen created a regulated commons that sustained tidewater communities for decades. Not until the 1980s did a confluence of natural and unnatural disasters weaken the bay’s resilience enough to endanger the oyster resource. Keiner examines conflicts that pitted scientists in favor of privatization against watermen who used their power in the statehouse to stave off the forces of rural change. Her study breaks new ground regarding the evolution of environmental politics at the state rather than the federal level. The Oyster Question concludes with the impassioned ongoing debate over introducing nonnative oysters to the Chesapeake Bay and how that proposal might affect the struggling watermen and their identity as the last hunter-gatherers of the industrialized world.
The Oyster Wars of the Chesapeake Bay
Eastern Branch Press is pleased to announce the new paperback edition of John R. Wennersten’s The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay. In the decades following the Civil War, Chesapeake Bay became the scene of a life and death struggle to harvest the oyster, one of the most valuable commodities on the Atlantic coast. In this book, noted historian and author John Wennersten tells the stories of watermen, law enforcement officers, government officials, Bay scientists, immigrants, and oyster shuckers involved in the oyster trade.
The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America
It all began simply enough. In 1976 the Point Reyes Wilderness Act granted the highest protection in America to more than 33,000 acres of California forest, grassland and shoreline – including Drakes Estero, an estuary of stunning beauty. Inside was a small, family-run oyster farm first established in the 1930s. A local rancher bought the business in 2005, renaming it The Drakes Bay Oyster Company. When the National Park Service informed him that the 40-year lease would not be renewed past 2012, he vowed to keep the farm in business even if it meant taking his fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Environmentalists, national politicians, scientists, and the Department of the Interior all joined a protracted battle for the estuary that had the power to influence the future of wilderness for decades to come. Were the oyster farmers environmental criminals, or victims of government fraud? Fought against a backdrop of fear of government corruption and the looming specter of climate change, the battle struck a national nerve, pitting nature against agriculture and science against politics, as it sought to determine who belonged and who didn’t belong, and what it means to be wild.
Watermen
In the late 1970’s Randall Peffer went to Tilghman Island in search of family ties. There, he lived the life of a waterman for a full year, during which he dredged for oysters aboard wind-powered skipjacks, went eeling, tonged for oysters, hunted clams and longlined for fin fish. The result is this treatise which although a bit contrived at times (filled with exposition framed as dialogue), still manages to capture these independent and hardy individuals as they were; fearful for the future of their lifestyle, but clinging to traditions dating back more than three hundred years. Filled with fascinating detail, poignant and honest, Watermen is a recommended read.
Working the Water
Jay Fleming’s first book, “Working the Water,” is a visual narrative of the lives of those individuals whose livelihood is directly dependent upon the Chesapeake Bay — America’s largest estuary. The book comprises photographs of seasoned watermen, scenic seascapes, weathered workboats and bay bounty — a true and complete depiction of Chesapeake Bay life. Equal parts informative and aesthetically pleasing, Jay’s flagship book, “Working the Water” appeals to the seafood enthusiast, the history buff, the biologist, photography fan, and Chesapeake Bay lover alike.
