Alongshore

by John R. Stilgoe

Along the shore are fishing boats and lighthouses, wharves and piers, resorts and shipwrecks - picturesque vistas that are visited and photographed but have never before been scrutinized from a historical or cultural perspective. In this enchanting book, John R. Stilgoe takes us on a tour of the seacoast, evoking its sights, sounds, and textures, and showing how it illuminates issues of landscape and of American culture.
Drawing on sources as diverse as Thoreau and Kate Chopin, agricultural newspapers and the Hardy Boys, and always emphasizing his own hikes and small-boat passages along the coast, Stilgoe provides a guidebook for anyone intrigued by the seacoast, "the last place in which adult Americans walk barefoot." He describes guzzles (configurations of sand), gunkholes (unfrequented harbors), and loomings (optical phenomena on the horizon). He explains why watchtowers stand guard all along the Atlantic coast; why wharves are perennially decaying; the different ways that pirates have been perceived through the centuries; and why local women of the shore towns wear bikinis. Like the sea itself, Stilgoe's Alongshore invigorates and exhilarates, drawing us back to its pleasures again and again.

Hardcover

First published April 27, 1994

About the author

John Stilgoe is an award-winning historian and photographer who is the Robert and Lois Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape at the Visual and Environmental Studies Department of Harvard University, where he has been teaching since 1977. He is also a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He was featured on a Sixty Minutes episode in 2004 entitled "The Eyes Have It."

Reviews

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book to refer to at the bedside in the middle of a cold rainy April night in Massachusetts. The author is local here, and a naturalist. Walking alongshore John makes observations about our natural seashore life, particularly in warmer weather, that make for relaxing winter dreams. A very slow read nonetheless.

[J. Alan]

I got rather inebriated, visited a bookstore, and now I have a copy of Alongshore. Guess I'll have to read it now.

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geography of coastal areas. Very informal writing but very interesting especially if you have spent time at old ocean side towns.

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stilgoe repopulates an entire landscape of lost knowledge. Read this book before you go down the sea again.