The best books on the crisis at the shoreline

Why am I passionate about this?

Virtually my entire life has been spent within a few minutes or perhaps an hour from the shoreline and whether surfing, lifeguarding, beach combing, or traveling coasts around the planet, this narrow zone is one of constant change and energy that continues to inspire and intrigue me. My career as a professor has focused on coastal change and the challenges that shoreline processes pose to our coastally-focused civilization. Fifty-five years of teaching at the University of California Santa Cruz on the shoreline of Monterey Bay has led to 14 books and over 400 newspaper columns on Our Ocean Backyard focused on the coast and its changes, and there is always more to observe, study, and enjoy.


I wrote...

Coasts in Crisis: A Global Challenge

By Gary Griggs,

Book cover of Coasts in Crisis: A Global Challenge

What is my book about?

Most of the world’s people live along coastlines, but these regions are under increasing stress globally. Whether natural hazards like hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, and a rising sea level or the multitude of ways in which these massive concentrations of people have affected the coastal oceans. Whether wastewater discharge and plastic disposal, overfishing, shoreline erosion and disappearing beaches, oil drilling, and tanker spills, the coasts are feeling the impacts of hundreds of millions of people.

The trends have been clear for some time. Still, the indicators are all moving in the wrong direction – more people creating greater impacts and climate change producing rising sea levels threatening all shorelines around the planet. The scale of the problems and lack of political will increase our challenges.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Changing Coastline

Gary Griggs Why did I love this book?

This book is one I didn’t want to put down and I don’t say this about most non-fiction books. Rosanna Xia, from her many years as a writer for the Los Angeles Times on coastal issues, has taken a topic that is of critical importance to all coastal cities and residents in California and beyond and through conversations with a wide variety of people in a handful of coastal communities makes this story engaging, interesting, and insightful.

The sea level is rising and we are in the way. We are now presented with massive challenges around the planet, and the coast of California and its diverse people and attitudes are a microcosm of this larger dilemma. Rosanna captures the diversity of opinions and perspectives in a very understandable and enlightening book that will be pertinent for many years to come.

Quite frankly, I loved this book and didn’t want it to end. As a journalist, Rosanna Xia brings a unique and engaging writing style to the threat that sea-level rise and shoreline retreat pose to a number of California’s coastal communities. I appreciated the way she used casual conversations with a disparate group of local residents in a number of towns to objectively present the diverse views of residents, elected officials, realtors and even scientists to the impacts of a rising ocean. 

By Rosanna Xia,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked California Against the Sea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From a celebrated environmental journalist, the riveting exploration of sea level rise along the West Coast through human stories and ecological dramas.

2023 Golden Poppy Award Winner for Nonfiction, Chosen by the California Independent Booksellers Alliance

"Viscerally urgent, thoroughly reported, and compellingly written-a must-read for our uncertain times." -Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

"When do seawalls make sense? And when is it better to give in to the tides? [...] In California Against the Sea, Xia [...] writes about the difficult realities of trying to incorporate fairness into our tally of costs and benefits." -The New Yorker

Along…


Book cover of The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

Gary Griggs Why did I love this book?

“Build back better” won’t be a long-term strategy for responding to sea-level rise, storm wave attack, shoreline erosion, and flooding. As the Earth continues to warm, the planet’s ice will continue to melt, and sea-level will rise in response.

I like the way Jeff Goodell brings the science of global warming together with the experiences and observations of coastal communities around the world to sound a clear alarm over not only what has already happened, but also what is most certainly going to come. Building back better in the same location won’t solve the problems we are increasingly facing. We need to build back safer and in higher-elevation inland areas.

By Jeff Goodell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Water Will Come as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

By century's end, hundreds of millions of people will be retreating from the world's shores. Nuclear reactors will be decommissioned. The greatest cities in human history, abandoned. This is the story of our rising seas.

In a shocking cover story for Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell predicted that within the lifetime of many of the readers of this book, Miami as we know it today will vanish.

This is not a reckless hypothesis. From island nations to the world's major metropolises, our coasts will drown in the rising waters, which will soon inundate and transform our landscapes. There is no simple…


Book cover of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

Gary Griggs Why did I love this book?

I enjoyed the way Elizabeth Rush ventured out into some diverse and remote places where sea level rise has had a profound impact on long-term residents.

She writes eloquently about people and their lives and homes and avoids the climate change politics and debates. This is not a future problem—it’s real, it’s now, and it’s everywhere, as her conversations so clearly and soberly illustrate.

By Elizabeth Rush,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Rising as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD

A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2018

A GUARDIAN, NPR's SCIENCE FRIDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018

Hailed as "deeply felt" (New York Times), "a revelation" (Pacific Standard), and "the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing" (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love.

With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change…


Book cover of High Tide On Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis

Gary Griggs Why did I love this book?

I like the way John Englander took a timely and relevant topic—rising sea levels—that could have been technical and dry and presented it in an engaging way with his writing and clear and simple graphics so that virtually anyone can pick this book up and understand why the oceans are rising and what this means for our collective future.

By John Englander,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked High Tide On Main Street as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published in 2012, High Tide on Main Street blazed a new trail in understanding the driving forces behind climate change and its most profound, unstoppable, and least-understood effect, Sea Level Rise (SLR).

In easy-to-understand language, oceanographer and explorer John Englander explains how SLR will become the most permanent effect of climate change. By focusing on sea level, he also provides excellent insights into greenhouse gas emissions - the forces that drive climate change.

One reviewer said: “the most understandable book on climate change I have read to date…”

While we are already feeling the effects of disastrous climate change…


Book cover of Against the Tide: The Battle for America's Beaches

Gary Griggs Why did I love this book?

I think Cory Dean, who was the long-time science editor for the New York Times, was perhaps the first to delve into the now well-documented and diverse impacts of the multiple human efforts to engineer and control our shorelines.

She visited dozens of threatened coastal communities and interviewed countless coastal geologists, engineers, elected officials, and citizens in order to better understand why decisions were made to modify shorelines in individual communities, more often than not, with predictable and damaging impacts on beaches.

In lively and engaging prose, she clearly explains each setting and location and why things went awry when Mother Nature always bats last.

By Cornelia Dean,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Against the Tide as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Americans love to colonize their beaches. But when storms threaten, high-ticket beachfront construction invariably takes precedence over coastal environmental concerns-we rescue the buildings, not the beaches. As Cornelia Dean explains in Against the Tide, this pattern is leading to the rapid destruction of our coast. But her eloquent account also offers sound advice for salvaging the stretches of pristine American shore that remain. The story begins with the tale of the devastating hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas, in 1900-the deadliest natural disaster in American history, which killed some six thousand people. Misguided residents constructed a wall to prevent another tragedy,…


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Book cover of Act Like an Author, Think Like a Business: Ways to Achieve Financial Literary Success

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Interested in sea level rise, California, and Los Angeles?

10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about sea level rise, California, and Los Angeles.

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