Chesapeake Requiem is a new book about the culturally rich and historically unique community of watermen on Tangier Island in the southern Chesapeake Bay and how sea-level rise may soon wash it all away. That would make Tangiermen some of America’s first climate change refugees.The author, Earl Swift, produced a complex and beautifully written book by spending 14 months living among the watermen on the tiny, isolated crabbing town just south of the Maryland/Virginia state line. But it’s not just a book about Chesapeake culture. It also raises profound and troubling questions about America: about climate change denialism from the crab shacks on Tangier Island to the White House; and what our country should do about the inundation of a growing number of waterfront communities caused by sea-level rise.Earl Swift, a former reporter for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, joined famed Chesapeake Bay author Tom Horton and myself in a panel discussion of the Chesapeake and climate change at the Baltimore Book Festival on Sunday.