The Gulf: the making of an American sea

Prologue : history, nature, and a forgotten sea

Introduction : birth

Part one. Estuaries, and the lie of the land and sea : aborigines and colonizing Europeans. Mounds

El golfo de México

Unnecessary death

A most important river, and a "magnificent" bay

Part two. Sea and sky : American debuts in the nineteenth century. Manifest destiny

A fishy sea

The wild fish that tamed the coast

Birds of a feather, shot together

Part three. Preludes to the future. From bayside to beachside

Oil and the Texas toe dip

Oil and the Louisiana plunge

Islands, shifting sands of time

Wind and water

Part four. Saturation and loss : post-1945. The growth coast

Florida worry, Texas slurry

Rivers of stuff

Runoff, and runaway

Sand in the hourglass

Losing the edge

Epilogue : a success story amid so much else.