Skip to main content

Categories

 


 

The Maryland History and Culture Bibliography

Mackiernan, Gail B., ed. Dissolved Oxygen in Chesapeake Bay: Processes and Effects. Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1988.
Notes: The summer loss of dissolved oxygen in deep waters of the Bay is one indicator of the estuary's serious environmental problems. Any student of the Bay should understand this phenomenon.

Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast. 1953; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Notes: Middleton, subsequently a retired Episcopal Canon, for years directed work at Colonial Williamsburg. This defining volume on Chesapeake Maritime History contains valuable environmental references coupled to the region's colonial economy.

Poag, C. Wylie. Chesapeake Invader: Discovering America's Giant Meteorite Crater. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Notes: Poag's recent book discusses the massive bolide impact which set up the geology beneath Chesapeake Bay. While the impact was centered beneath what is today the Virginia Eastern Shore, parts of the bolide struck in Maryland as well, and affected the entire drainage system.

Scott, Jane. Between Ocean and Bay: A Natural History of Delmarva. Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1991.

Smith, David E., Merrill Leffler, and Gail Mackiernan, eds. Oxygen Dynamics in Chesapeake Bay: A Synthesis of Recent Research. Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1992.
Notes: A follow-on to Mackiernan, 1988.

Smith, John. The General Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles. 1624; reprint, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966.
Notes: Facsimile, also reissued by World Publishing, Cleveland, OH. This volume is as close to reading the original as most of us will get. John Smith was the first environmental observer of Bay and watershed, and his insights are sobering when one contemplates the changes we have wrought.

Vokes, Harold E. Miocene Fossils of Maryland. 1957; reprint, Baltimore: Maryland Geological Survey, 1968.

Ward, Lauck W., and David S. Powars. Tertiary Stratigraphy and Paleontology, Chesapeake Bay Region, Virginia and Maryland. Washington, DC: 28th International Geological Congress, American Geophysical Union, 1989.
Notes: A thorough discussion of how layers of this region's fossils lie in our exposed cliffs. Not a popularly written text, but this is how to find and identify many of the region's marvelous fossils.

Michener, James. Chesapeake. New York: Random House, Inc., 1978.
Notes: Historical novel.

Wycherly, H. Alan. "H. L. Mencken vs. The Eastern Shore: December, 1931." Bulletin of the New York Public Library 74 (1970): 381-390.

"Burgess Eastern Shore Early Americana Museum." Peninsula Pacemaker 20 (August 1992): 22-23.

A Guide to Maryland State Archives Holdings of Somerset County Records on Microfilm. Annapolis: Maryland State Archives, 1989.

"Maryland's Best Kept Humanities Secret: Burgess Early Americana Museum." Maryland Humanities (March/April 1994): 27.

Carr, Lois Green, and Lorena S. Walsh. "The Standard of Living in the Colonial Chesapeake." William and Mary Quarterly 45 (January 1988): 135-59.
Notes: Carr and Walsh make detailed use of probate records from seventeenth and eighteenth century Maryland to argue that the period in Chesapeake area history represented a shift from an early emphasis upon material necessities to an improved standard of living marked by "gentility." The authors contend that this change reached across class lines and helped to fuel, rather than check, the productive economy of the colony. The article includes extensive tables and graphs of evidence regarding consumer items for several Maryland and Virginia counties.

Guest, C. "The Boarding of the Dependent Poor in Colonial America." Social Service Review 63 (March 1989): 92-112.

Horton, Tom. An Island Out of Time: A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake. New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 1996.
Notes: Horton's title suggests his principal themes in examining Smith Island life: that the islands represent a distinctive way of life rooted in another time whose preservation into the future may literally be running out of time. An environmental columnist for the Baltimore <em>Sun</em> who lived on Smith Island in the late 1980s as an environmental educator with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Horton examines the water-related economy, traditionally based on oystering and crabbing, and the unique way of life that evolved in the relative isolation of the island communities. His book profiles the personalities of Smith Island, the work of men and women, the pervasive role of religion in island life, and social, economic, and environmental changes threatening the island's future.

Jerrard, Margot. "Love and Marriage in Colonial Maryland." Maryland 25 (December 1993): 66-67, 69.

Quinn, David B. "Why They Came." In Early Maryland in a Wider World, edited by David B. Quinn, 119-148. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982.

Russo, Jean B. "The Constables' Lists: An Invaluable Resource." Maryland Historical Magazine 85 (Summer 1990): 164-70.

Guest, Geoffrey. "The Boarding of the Dependent Poor in Colonial America." Social Service Review 63 (1989): 92-112.

Back to Top