“Cory Brant delivers the definitive history of the sea lamprey in the Great Lakes, weaving together personal interviews, scientific information, compelling stories of invasion and discovery, and the histories of shipping, commercial fishing, the Erie and Welland Canals, and the locks at Sault Ste. Marie—all in dovetail with the life history of the lamprey.”
—Jerry Dennis, author of The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes and The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas
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Winner: American Library Association (ALA) 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
— ALA Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Winner: Historical Society of Michigan (HSM) 2020 State History Award
— HSM State History Award
"People who don’t know anything about sea lampreys – and maybe even those who do – might look at the cover of Cory Brant’s Great Lakes Sea Lamprey and think they are holding a volume of science fiction. The mouth of the lamprey looks like a giant suction-cup filled with small sharp teeth. It almost resembles some sort of horrible machine out of Star Wars or The Matrix. Behind the big circle of the mouth is a small, protruding blue eye. Brant gives us a better description early in this excellent history of the creature, its life in the Great Lakes, and the science that has tried to understand and control it. . . If we hope and need to have a healthy fishery in the Great Lakes we will always have to find a way to control sea lampreys. But Brant lets us know that it 'is more than a fish story. It is a reminder of why natural things are important and how each ecosystem is connected.'"
—Michigan Quarterly Review
— Keith Taylor, Michigan Quarterly Review
Winner: 2020 University of Michigan Press Book Award
— UMP Book Award