Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island
By Earl Swift
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post, NPR, Outside, Smithsonian, Bloomberg, Science Friday, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, and Kirkus
"BEAUTIFUL, HAUNTING AND TRUE." — Hampton Sides • “GORGEOUS. A TRULY REMARKABLE BOOK.” — Beth Macy • "GRIPPING. FANTASTIC." — Outside • "CAPTIVATING." — Washington Post • "POWERFUL." — Bill McKibben • "VIVID. HARROWING AND MOVING." — Science • "A MASTERFUL NARRATIVE." — Christian Science Monitor • "THE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR." — Stephen L. Carter/Bloomberg
Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. Mapped by John Smith in 1608, settled during the American Revolution, the tiny sliver of mud is home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence, with one foot in the 21st century and another in times long passed. They are separated from their countrymen by the nation’s largest estuary, and a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water—the same water that for generations has made Tangier’s fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the rightly prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world.
Yet for all of its long history, and despite its tenacity, Tangier is disappearing. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island day by day, wave by wave. It has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850, and still its shoreline retreats by fifteen feet a year—meaning this storied place will likely succumb first among U.S. towns to the effects of climate change. Experts reckon that, barring heroic intervention by the federal government, islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times.
Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate look at the island’s past, present and tenuous future, by an acclaimed journalist who spent much of the past two years living among Tangier’s people, crabbing and oystering with its watermen, and observing its long traditions and odd ways. What emerges is the poignant tale of a world that has, quite nearly, gone by—and a leading-edge report on the coming fate of countless coastal communities.
Earl Swift
Earl Swift is the author of the New York Times bestseller Chesapeake Requiem, which was named to ten best-of-the-year lists. His other books include Across the Airless Wilds, Auto Biography, The Big Roads, and Where They Lay. A former reporter for the Virginian-Pilot and a contributor to Outside and other publications, he is a fellow of Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia. He lives in the Blue Ridge mountains west of Charlottesville.
Read more from Earl Swift
The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAuto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Where They Lay: A Forensic Expedition in the Jungles of Laos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Journey on the James: Three Weeks through the Heart of Virginia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tangierman's Lament: and Other Tales of Virginia Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Chesapeake Requiem
Related ebooks
Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stone Desert Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDrifting into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Meadow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCold Mountain Path: The Ghost Town Decades of McCarthy-Kennecott, Alaska Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5PrairyErth: A Deep Map Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great Plains Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Trails: An Exploration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada’s Last Great Trees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5River-Horse: A Voyage Across America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Deep Hanging Out: Wanderings and Wonderment in Native California Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRafting the River of No Return Wilderness - The Middle Fork of the Salmon River Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crossing Open Ground Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
United States History For You
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Chesapeake Requiem
42 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Swift details the history and current existence of a slice of American life that is largely invisible and will soon become even more so. What's interesting is how deftly Swift walks the line between showing how climate change is a large part of the issues that Tangier Island faces but doesn't chastise or condescend to the people of Tangier who generally don't see it in quite the same way.There are beautiful descriptions of life on the water. There are in-depth details about the lifestyle of crabs. There are repeated details about the many familial connections between the people of the island. All of this doesn't add up quite as well as I'd hoped. It becomes repetitious through the middle of the book to the point that I couldn't sustain my interest. There wasn't enough of a sense of where the story was going or how these people might actually start to make changes in their lives. I might pick it back up from the library and flip to the last chapter or two to see how things wrapped up.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book was a finalist for the One Maryland One Book selection for 2019. It presents quite a dilemma- how many resources can we afford to spend to try to preserve this unique community when the forces of nature are so strong? An interesting read for our bookclub, but it was a bit of a challenge to finish it as there is no suspense line to draw you in. A worthy addition to books that document life on the Chesapeake Bay.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The story of Tangier Island and how climate change is affecting it. Tangier since the early part of the 20th century has been disappearing as the ocean levels rise. Predictions are that in 50 years the island will be gone. This book does a great job of talking about the island’s history, its people, and how its demise has affected them and the industry that has sustained them for generations.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5There’s a romance that lingers around certain places in America. Usually they are places that to outside observers have been “left behind” by modernity. Those of us frantically trying to keep up with the blistering pace of technology fool ourselves into thinking that the “good old days” represent some platonic ideal of how life should be lived. Reality, of course, looks different when viewed from inside the bubble,Such is the case with Tangier Island, a seemingly idyllic throwback to a simpler time when men supported their families by working the land (or in this case, water), when everyone in a small town knew everyone else, when the attractions of nature, board games, and books outweighed the allure of instant messaging, video games, and social media. Every summer, tourists flock to this Chesapeake Bay island (only reachable by ferry, and navigable on land via bicycle or golf cart) to briefly gawk at people whom time has seemingly passed by.The subtitle of Earl Swift’s Chesapeake Requiem: A Year With the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island (Harper Collins, 2018) offers the reader a clue that not all is what it seems, and as the pages turn the dilemma faced by the people of Tangier becomes more and more clear: Rising waters in the Chesapeake (caused by a number of factors including coastal erosion and climate change) have swallowed two-thirds of Tangier’s land mass in the past two centuries. The best-case scenario, if no man-made intervention is made, is that the island will be uninhabitable within 50 years. The math is not promising: The current population is fewer than 500 people. The cost of shoring up the island is measured in the tens of millions of dollars.Swift, a longtime journalist in Virginia, who had visited Tangier earlier this millennium while reporting a story, felt compelled to return in 2015 and chronicle life on the island in depth. By living for a full year on the island, he was able to earn the trust of the islanders, who opened their lives to him in really moving ways. Swift shares with the reader not only the scientific and political ramifications of the island’s disappearing land mass, but the essential humanity of the people whose families have lived and worked on the island for generations. We learn about the island’s past glories as a preeminent source of the coveted blue crab, its difficult present as the watery bounty in the Bay and the land under their feet both become ever more scarce, and its grim future as its young people graduate from high school and most of them move off-island, never to return.Whenever a reporter embeds themselves into a place there can be a temptation to over-identify with your subject matter, resulting in journalism that fails to cast an objective eye on the situation. Happily, that’s not the case with Swift. While it’s clear that he feels affection and respect for the people he meets and lives among on Tangier, he doesn’t shy away from detailing their shortcomings. In particular, the near-universal refusal to believe that climate change is real, let alone playing a role in their island’s peril, is frustrating to read about, as is their hostility to the environmentalists who want to help save the island but who are mistrusted as also wanting to regulate the fisheries that support the islanders. I felt the same about the people’s baffling passivity in the face of their problems; at one point, several of the old watermen are sitting around talking about a meeting on the mainland where decisions will be made that could seriously impact their ability to earn a living from crabbing. “Somebody should go down there and represent the island,” they all agree. But no one is willing to actually do it, and so the meeting takes place without any representation from the people whose lives will be affected.Beyond the science and the politics, however, I found myself enthralled by Swift’s pellucid descriptions of everyday life. I felt as though I was on board the crabbing boat of Ooker Eskridge, mayor of Tangier and hard-working waterman, as he pulled up his catch and sorted it into pots of jimmies (males), sooks and sallies (females), and peelers (those about to shed their shell and become the coveted soft-shell crab). Late in the book, a sudden storm blows up and puts the lives of father-and-son crabbers in peril when they are caught in the squall far from shore. I could feel the sleet lashing my face and the desperation of the men as they fought to save themselves and their boat. And when word reaches land that they are in trouble, fishermen who had just fought through the same storm and thankfully reached the safety harbor don’t hesitate for an instant before turning around and heading back into the dangerous waters to try to save their friends. I didn’t come away from A Chesapeake Requiem with any brilliant ideas about what should be done. Should millions of dollars be spent to save what’s left of the island and its few hundred residents? Would the money be better spent to re-locate the people of Tangier to the mainland? What do we as a society lose when we lose places like Tangier — what value do you place on that sort of community benefit when you are calculating what saving the island is worth? Swift doesn’t pretend to have the answers, either, but his moving and enlightening work helped me understand just what’s at stake on this small patch of land so far away from me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very interesting--we visited this island, however the book went on and on.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tangier Island is a tiny island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay (between Virginia and Maryland on the East coast of the US) that is getting tinier by the moment. This is true for both the physical shoreline of the island and for the aging population. The island is visibly sinking into the bay, losing feet of shoreline yearly due to rising sea levels from global warming. However, the islanders firmly believe that it's what they call "erosion", not climate change, as they are climate change deniers. While the island shrinks, so does the population. This is partially due to the crabbing industry, the main - really only - source of income for the island, falling apart. Maryland Blue Crabs are well known for their deliciousness and are a regional delicacy. But over-fishing and changing environment are making the crab population dwindle. Local regulations have brought back the blue crabs fairly successfully, but they are not as local to Tangier Island anymore, so the industry for the island is not sustaining families anymore. More and more of the younger generations are choosing to go to college and stay on the mainland. The author of this book stays on the island for a year, getting to know the people and presenting a detailed history of the island. He discusses the science of what is happening to the island and the cultural significance of physical changes of the island. The author frames this as a larger discussion of what we're going to do as a nation as populated areas of our country are made uninhabitable by climate change. How big does a community need to be for the federal government to save it? Does cultural significance play a role in the decision? Tangier Island is a unique, isolated society with an important local industry, an accent so think they sound like they are speaking another language, and their own brand of government plus christianity. I really loved this book. It's a fascinating look at an area and people that live within a few hours of my home, but whose beliefs, customs, and ways of life are totally foreign to mine. It is not at all "preachy" about climate change, it is actually a well-balanced look at the people, the island, and the politics. Original publication date: 2018Author’s nationality: AmericanOriginal language: EnglishLength: 382 pagesRating: 4.5 starsFormat/where I acquired the book: borrowed from my mom who was reading it for her bookclubWhy I read this: sounded interesting - also because my mom told me several women in her bookclub sat out this month because they wouldn't read a book about climate change since they don't believe in it. :-0
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The story of Tangier Island and how climate change is affecting it. Tangier since the early part of the 20th century has been disappearing as the ocean levels rise. Predictions are that in 50 years the island will be gone. This book does a great job of talking about the island’s history, its people, and how its demise has affected them and the industry that has sustained them for generations.