Experience the unique ecology of the Outer Lands in this reissued classic “An extraordinary achievement in natural history and science. But it’s so artfully written you forget it’s a scientific treatise and find yourself reading it with sheer pleasure.” — Provincetown Advocate Dorothy Sterling explores the fascinating plants and animals that inhabit the peninsulas and islands of the East Coast known as the Outer Lands. With vibrant original drawings by Winifred Lubell and a new foreword by natural historian Robert Finch, The Outer Lands is a lively, lovingly observed biography of place.

Did you know that horseshoe crabs have been around for 200 million years? That mussels spin long anchor lines and climb steep slopes with them? Do you know what a Beetlebung tree is?

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Regional map -- Introduction -- Physical coast -- Weather and water -- Human history -- Shallows -- Depths -- Beaches and dunes -- Rocky shores -- Salt marshes -- Coastal forests -- Connecticut locations -- New York locations -- Bibliography -- Illustration Credits -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Y

Andrew Lipman’s eye-opening first book is the previously untold story of how the ocean became a “frontier” between colonists and Indians. When the English and Dutch empires both tried to claim the same patch of coast between the Hudson River and Cape Cod, the sea itself became the arena of contact and conflict. During the violent European invasions, the region’s Algonquian-speaking Natives were navigators, boatbuilders, fishermen, pirates, and merchants who became active players in the emergence of the Atlantic World. Drawing from a wide range of English, Dutch, and archeological sources, Lipman uncovers a new geography of Native America that incorporates seawater as well as soil. Looking past Europeans’ arbitrary land boundaries, he reveals unseen links between local episodes and global events on distant shores. Lipman’s book “successfully redirects the way we look at a familiar history” (Neal Salisbury, Smith College). Extensively researched and elegantly written, this latest addition to Yale’s seventeenth-century American history list brings the early years of New England and New York vividly to life.