Waves and tides, wind and storms, sea-level rise and shore erosion: these are the forces that shape our beaches, and beach lovers of all stripes can benefit from learning more about how these coastal processes work. With animation and clarity, The Beach Book tells sunbathers why beaches widen and narrow, and helps boaters and anglers understand why tidal inlets migrate. It gives home buyers insight into erosion rates and provides natural-resource managers and interested citizens with rich information on beach nourishment and coastal-zone development. And for all of us concerned about the long-term health of our beaches, it outlines the latest scientific information on sea-level rise and introduces ways to combat not only the erosion of beaches but also the decline of other coastal habitats. The more we learn about coastline formation and maintenance, Carl Hobbs argues, the better we can appreciate and cultivate our shores. Informed by the latest research and infused with a passion for its subject, The Beach Book provides a wide-ranging introduction to the shore, and all of us who love the beach and its associated environments will find it timely and useful.

“A first-rate storyteller who creates believable, sympathetic characters who seem as familiar as your neighbors,” (The Boston Globe), Barbara Delinsky presents a captivating new novel about a woman whose unexpected reunion with her estranged family forces her to confront a devastating past in A Week at the Shore. One phone call is all it takes to lure Mallory Aldiss back to her family’s Rhode Island beach home. It's been twenty years since she's been gone—running from the scandal that destroyed her parents' marriage, drove her and her two sisters apart, and crushed her relationship with the love of her life, Jack Sabathian. Twenty years during which she lived in New York, building her career as a photographer and raising her now teenage daughter Joy. But that phone call makes it clear that something has brought the past forward again—something involving Mallory’s father. Compelled by concern for her family and by Joy’s wish to visit her mother’s childhood home, Mallory returns to Bay Bluff, where conflicting loyalties will be faced and painful truths revealed. In just seven watershed days at the Rhode Island shore, she will test the bonds of friendship and family—and discover the role that love plays in defining their lives.

"Finch is today’s best, most perceptive Cape Cod writer in a line extending all the way back to Henry David Thoreau." —Christian Science Monitor Weaving together Robert Finch’s collected writings from over fifty years and a thousand miles of walking along Cape Cod’s Atlantic coast, The Outer Beach is a poignant, candid chronicle of an iconic American landscape anyone with an appreciation for nature will cherish.

Sandy beaches represent some of the most dynamic environments on Earth and examining their morphodynamic behaviour over different temporal and spatial scales is challenging, relying on multidisciplinary approaches and techniques. Sandy Beach Morphodynamics brings together the latest research on beach systems and their morphodynamics and the ways in which they are studied in 29 chapters that review the full spectrum of beach morphodynamics. The chapters are written by leading experts in the field and provide introductory level understanding of physical processes and resulting landforms, along with more advanced discussions.

For more than a century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been building fortifications along the American coastline in an effort to protect our vulnerable shores. With the prospect of seaborne invasion becoming increasingly unlikely, the Corps has turned its attention to a more subtle but no less dangerous threat: the insidious effects of coastal erosion.In "The Corps and the Shore," Orrin H. Pilkey, the nation's most outspoken coastal geologist, and Katharine L. Dixon, an educator and activist for national coastal policy reform, provide a comprehensive examination of the impact of coastal processes on developed areas and the ways in which the Corps of Engineers has attempted to manage erosion along America's coastline.Through detailed case studies of large-scale projects in Texas, Maine, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina, the authors demonstrate the shortcomings of the Corps's underlying assumptions and methodology. As they discuss the role of local citizens in the project process, they highlight the interaction between local Corps offices and community officials and residents. By focusing on different types of problems in various regions of the country, Pilkey and Dixon clearly show how the Corps has repeatedly failed to act in the best interest of those most affected by the projects. As well as criticizing Corps practices, the authors provide numerous suggestions for reforming the Corps and making it both more scientifically accountable and more accountable to the citizens it is intended to serve."The Corps and the Shore" is essential reading for coastal residents, environmentalists, planners, and coastal city officials as well as geologists, civil engineers, marine scientists, and anyone concerned with the impact of human society on our shorelines.

Our beaches are eroding, sinking, washing out right under our houses, hotels, bridges; vacation dreamlands become nightmare scenes of futile revetments, fills, groins, what have you—all thrown up in a frantic defense against the natural system. The romantic desire to live on the seashore is in doomed conflict with an age-old pattern of beach migration. Yet it need not be so. Conservationist Wallace Kaufman teams up with marine geologist Orrin H. Pilkey Jr., in an evaluation of America's beaches from coast to coast, giving sound advice on how to judge a safe beach development from a dangerous one and how to live at the shore sensibly and safely.

This book is written for engineers, students of coastal processes and laypersons interested in beach nourishment, which consists of the placement of large quantities of good quality sediment on the beach to advance the shoreline seaward. The improvement of project performance through proper design and the predictability of performance are emphasized. The overall longevity of a project is addressed as are local erosional areas. The roles which wave height, project length and sediment quality play in project performance are addressed quantitatively. The results are illustrated through reference to a number of monitored nourishment projects. Biological and economic aspects of beach nourishment are addressed.