Joining Mike and Lady Gaga on CNN’s “Friday’s Intriguing People” list is Robert Gilmer, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Gilmer is teaching a course next semester on the Gulf Coast oil disaster dubbed “Oil and Water: The Gulf Oil Spill of 2010.” According to the Minnesota Daily, the course will address the current crisis in the Gulf of Mexico by educating students on the history and ecology of the Gulf, the makeup of the Louisiana economy and the impact of past oil spills on humans and the environment.
The class will not have textbooks but Gilmer tells CNN that “Mike Tidwell’s Bayou Farewell: The Race to Save America’s Coastal Cities will definitely be on the [reading] list.”
And that’s why CNN called Mike. Mike’s book, Bayou Farewell, which predicted in detail the Katrina hurricane disaster in 2003, will be reissued in August with a new introduction on the BP blowout tragedy. Mike told CNN that the BP disaster likely will have a bigger impact on coastal people than even Katrina did in terms of its economic and cultural disruptions.
You can read the final chapter of Bayou Farewell, which discusses the size and scope of the drilling operation in Louisiana, on our blog.
And, in case you were wondering, Lady Gaga made the list because she and President Obama are neck in neck in a race to become the first living person with more than 10 million fans on facebook.
