SCIENCES

Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island

by Earl Swift
Dey St: HarperCollins. Aug. 2018. 464p. notes. index. ISBN 9780062661395. $28.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062661418. NAT HIST
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Journalist Swift (The Big Roads) documents the nearly two years he spent living on Tangier Island in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay, a unique community that scientists say may be the first place in the United States to cease to exist because of climate change. With less than 1,000 residents and an economy revolving around blue crab fishing, Tangier loses 15 feet of shoreline a year. Island residents have developed their own ways of living, adapting to the isolating environment away from the mainland. Swift's journey through Tangier provides a firsthand account of island living through the words of the islanders themselves, sprinkled with historical anecdotes and scientific observations. He shares a close portrait of the people that make up this threatened land and its one-of-a-kind way of life.
VERDICT A moving account of a vanishing place, sure to satisfy anyone concerned with climate change, environmental issues, and anthropology.
Reviewed by Venessa Hughes, Buffalo, NY , Jun 15, 2018
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