Similar types of trees, live oaks, long leaf pines, palm trees, sandy soil, salt in the air. The gulf of mexico, of course, nourishes and supplies us with wonderful seafood. Estuaries and rivers and places like mobile bay are wonderfully rich in tradition and culture. And there have been books and memoirs and so forth sort of in and around all these things for hundreds of years. So its an extraordinarily rich subject to take. And then, of course, along comes the oil spill in 2010 where all of a sudden we are at center stage, and people are beginning to look at the gulf coast and think about, wow, whats it like there, what moved this them or we didnt know we got so much of our oil and gas from there, good lord. And so the nation really became kind of tuned in to how important the gulf is. Learn about the rich history and literary life of mobile, alabama, on booktv and American History tv today at 5 15 p. M. Eastern on cspan2 and sunday at 2 on cspan3. Coming up next, Wake Forest University professor Michelle Gillespie discusses her boyle my of the founder biography of r. J. Reynolds. Katherine reynolds philanthropic pursuits after r. J. s death. This is about 40 minutes