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A History of Industry, Greed, and Fishing in the Golden State
by Joseph Ogilvy
The untold story of the California Coast, told through the natural histories of three marine species caught in the dragnet of human history.
Look west from San Francisco or Monterey, past the surfers and cargo ships. This is the California Current, 1,900 miles of the most productive waters on earth. It was here that 18th-century Natives knew frisbee-sized abalone mollusks, sardine schools the size of buses, and Yellowfin tuna, each the size of a man. But it was not to last.
Over the next three centuries, the abalone, sardine, and tuna were swept into the violent undertow of history. Their species became resources. They drove the Spanish-Russian land war of the 18th century, California's virulently racist first "conservation" laws in the 19th, and an ad campaign that kept America fed on just-like-chicken canned goods in the 20th. Along the way, they became drivers of geopolitical competition, catalysts for the dramatic rise and fall of Cannery Row aristocracy, and even surly muses for John Steinbeck and Fritz Lang.
Collapsing the distinctions between human and natural history, Tin Can Coast brings the cautionary tale of the California shore to life.
"Ogilvy debuts with an ambitious and sweeping history of hunting and fishing along the California coast, tracing centuries of upheaval by humans...A lucid, unsettling diagnosis of the economic, political, and ecological forces shaping the Pacific Coast." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This far-reaching work of history demonstrates how seemingly disparate forces can work together to make or break a town, an industry, a community, or a once-thriving species. Tin Can Coast will appeal to a wide variety of readers interested in economic forces, the environment, and twentieth-century American history." —Booklist
This information about Tin Can Coast was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joseph Ogilvy is a writer and chef. After graduating from Oxford University, he spent several years working in London restaurants, including Bocca di Lupo, while writing on his days off. His experience in kitchens led him to research involving the tangled human and ecological history of food. He lives in Austin, Texas.
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