Showing results for "Fish" in Americas

The cod has played a vital part in livelihoods, diets, and health in general — as well as roles in national economies and international wars. Drawing on his love of food and food culture, Mark Kurlansky leaps into history and folklore to explore how this innocuous fish had such an impact over the centuries.

Few fish are as beloved, or as obsessed over, as the American shad. Although shad spend most of their lives in salt water, they enter rivers by the hundreds of thousands in the spring and swim upstream heroic distances in order to spawn, then return to the ocean.

Though the outcome of the American Revolution is the high point in the history of the New World, the victory of the embattled colonists was a tenuous one, shaped by heroism, suffering and an abiding thirst for liberty deeper than the harbors that played host to so many battles. But what if His Majesty's Navy could have confined the nettlesome Yankee privateers, manned by furious fishermen, to their wharves and kept the vital sea lanes from England open?

In this brilliant portrait of the oceans' unlikely hero, H. Bruce Franklin shows how menhaden have shaped America's national-and natural-history, and why reckless overfishing now threatens their place in both. Since Native Americans began using menhaden as fertilizer, this amazing fish has greased the wheels of U.S. agriculture and industry.

Justin Pitre was born and raised on his grandfather's Louisiana bayou, and he has made a promise to keep his family's prized 500-acre property safe. But across town, Big-Tex oil bigwig Tom Huff and his company have major plans to cash in on the resources that lie below the bayou.

People of the Sturgeon is a history of the lake sturgeon in Wisconsin's Lake Winnebago region, told through a fascinating collection of stories on the culture, art, and science surrounding this mysterious fish. From some of the earliest inhabitants of Wisconsin, the Menominee Indian Tribe, to the spearers who flock to frozen Lake Winnebago for the annual sturgeon spearing season, people have always been drawn to this ancient fish.

Digging into one's family history can reveal unusual surprises. In my case, I recently discovered my great grandfather, Jesse C. Davisson's first-hand account of his 25-year military experience during an epic period in American history. Jesse was no angel when he first joined the Army in 1893, as an ordinary young man in Philadelphia. His diary follows his subsequent adventures - from learning to ride a horse with the 7th Cavalry, and befriending Indian Scouts, to surviving ambushes, and water-boarding prisoners - all while serving in the American Indian Wars.