| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.4

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

Book Review

Amazon Sweet Sea: Land, Life, and Water at the River's Mouth. By Nigel J. H. Smith. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. xii + 281 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $39.95.

Nigel Smith has a long and distinguished career studying the human geography of the Amazon River basin. In this latest work, he brings together material researched over the past thirty years in the estuary of the Amazon, particularly the island of Marajó. While Amazon Sweet Sea appears to be more suited to the coffee table than the academic bookshelf, thanks to the author's lush photos, Smith neatly brings both color and academic rigor to the subject. The study's intent is to reveal how the largely subsistence economies of the people of the river's mouth, the caboclos, illustrate a sustainable alternative to the rapacious nature of Amazonian development today. For Smith, the peoples' lives and experience offer a profound lesson in the understanding of human ecology in this vast and complex fluvial ecosystem.

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