| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.4

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography. By John R. Wennersten. Baltimore, Md.: Maryland Historical Society, 2001. xix + 255 pp. Bibliographical references, index. Cloth $30.00.
The Chesapeake Bay, one of the world's finest and most productive estuaries, has been central to the life of Maryland and Virginia. Its history is rich with tales of daring and adventure, caring and greed. Today the bay is the subject of massive restoration efforts led by enthusiastic activists while still being faced with the same destructive exploitation that has threatened its viability over the centuries. John Wennersten's new history recounts episodes in the life of the bay that are useful in understanding both its history and its current condition.	1
The introduction provides an overview of the estuary in crisis today, as Wennersten writes, "under assault by commercial and industrial development, population growth, agricultural pollution, resource mismanagement, and political ineptitude" (p. ix). He notes that people spread throughout the large drainage basin in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia all contribute to the bay's current condition. The many tributaries of the bay, including the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and the James, bring the fresh water which mixes with the salt water from the Atlantic. Wennersten ties all these elements together in this newest of only several book-length studies of the bay's history.	. . .

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