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Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-57131-333-1
Pages: 272
Publish Date: Dec, 2011
Genre: Nonfiction
The Tarball Chronicles
BY David Gessner
Beyond the oil-soaked pelican, beyond the burning oil rig, beyond mainstream coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, there lies a deeper story. At the height of this record-setting catastrophe, David Gessner—environmental advocate, provocateur, and author of My Green Manifesto—went to the Gulf in search of that story, and what he found was heartbreaking: the region’s once thriving ecosystem had been devastated, but the cause was much larger and more complex than one isolated accident.
A spirited call for a future without oil spills.
Part absurdist travelogue, part manifesto, The Tarball Chronicles is more than anything a love letter to the Gulf. As he meets oceanographers, activists, and subsistence fishermen, Gessner falls hard for a culture and ecosystem on the brink of extinction. Over the course of his travels, two simple questions emerge: How long will we mortgage our future for a present of convenience and speed? And, how terrible would life really be if we never took such a dire risk again? Published to coincide with the proclaimed “end” of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill—September 19—this book shows us how the fallout from wagers like these lasts forever.
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:
My Green Manifesto
A spirited call to arms by a major figure on the vanguard of a new environmentalism.
Read more ›
For those interested in putting the Gulf crisis in perspective, there can be no better guide than this funny, often uncertain, frank, opinionated, always curious, informed and awestruck accounting of how we’ve gone wrong and could go right, a full-strength antidote to the Kryptonite of corporate greed and human ignorance.
—Atlanta Journal Constitution“Plenty of people are writing about the BP oil disaster, but few indeed will be able to make us feel the reality of it like David Gessner can. The likelihood that his account will also be action-filled and darkly funny is pure bonus.”
—John Jeremiah Sullivan“[The Tarball Chronicles] offers compelling images and vivid descriptions of the Gulf. Anyone who wanted a first-hand look at the Gulf after the news cycle ended will find it here, but this brilliant thoughtful book will leave them disquieted.”
—Publishers Weekly“In this highly readable, firsthand account of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, David Gessner considers the catastrophe in the Gulf as a symptom of even bigger economic and cultural challenges that loom in our future. This excellent book is not judgmental, but thought provoking and well worth reading."
—David Allen Sibley, author of The Sibley Guide to Birds
