I've got a pile of books I'm hoping to get through this summer. I recently picked up a copy of Pennsylvania Avenue -- Profiles of Backroom Power, by John Harwood and Gerald Seib. As a reporter for TPMmuckraker, I figured maybe I'll stumble across some of those great nuggets of background knowledge that help show how things really work here in Washington. And I also bought a copy of George Soros's new book, The New Paradigm For Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. I love these sorts of big-picture business books. And Soros seems like a pretty smart guy. (Remember when he made a billion dollars with that bet against the British Pound?)

But the book I pulled off the shelf a few weeks ago was The Oyster Wars of the Chesapeake Bay, by John Wennersten. I found it at a used bookstore last year in my hometown of Salisbury, Maryland. This is not, and never has been, a best seller. But I have a soft spot for the history of Maryland's Eastern Shore, the Chesapeake Bay and the Delmarva Peninsula.

Oysters are really fascinating, I think. They're the only thing we eat while it's still alive. The Oyster Wars chronicles the violence among the roughneck watermen of the Bay around the turn of the 20th century. The crews carried muskets and most dredging boats had howitzers on the deck. It reminds me of how lawless parts of our own country were not too long ago. The waterman far outgunned the under-funded Maryland and Virginia "Oyster police" and most of the major battles were between the watermen themselves, clannish groups of Marylanders and Virginians fighting over access to the lucrative oyster bars of the Tangier Sound.

"Throughout December, 1883, the invading Virginia dredges encountered a storm of bullets from outraged Maryland watermen, and for the remainder of the season open warfare prevailed. To retaliate against the Virginia poachers, the watermen of Smith Island pirated oysters in Virginia waters. When the Virginia police schooner Tangier pursued the watermen back to Smith Island, it meet with fierce reception. The Schooner was fired upon by twenty-five Marylanders with repeating rifles. The Tangier returned the fire with a salvo from its cannon. The Smith Islanders fired five hundred rounds or more and threw up hasty breastwork to protect the island from an invasion by the Virginia police."

There was big money in the oyster business back then, when the oyster brokers of Baltimore supplied most of the oysters for the entire country. The port town of Crisfield, Maryland was once a bustling town of bars and brothels and sailboats made of wood.

"A get-rich-quick spirit prevailed in Crisfield, and the attendant lawlessness of local life made this waterfront community resemble a rough, sprawling mining town of the great western frontier. The lure of the almighty oyster attracted a swelling population of merchants, immigrants, gamblers, bootleggers and prostitutes."

These days, Crisfield is a sleepy little village about a half-hour drive from the main highway. The few condos built at the height of the recent housing boom remain unsold. Every few years I like to go down there and take a ferry out to Smith Island, which had a population of 364 when the last census was taken in 2000. (The island itself is slowly disappearing as water levels rise in the Bay.) Many of the residents there still make their living off crabs and oysters. Next time I go, I'll probably think about the book, The Oyster Wars of the Chesapeake Bay.