Books: Against The Tide: The Battle For America’s Beaches

As Americans bask by the ocean this summer, they might consider the latest candidate for extinction: the beach beneath them. Dean exhaustively documents the ways in which coastal development threatens the very amenity that has caused a trillion-dollar land rush to the shores since World War II. Seawalls, jetties and other technologies aimed at protecting waterfront property only accelerate the loss of sand or starve nearby beaches. Unless politicians end the absurd subsidies that encourage development on shifting sands, Dean powerfully argues, America may face a future of beachless beach towns.

–By Eugene Linden