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Dispatches from the New American Shore
by Elizabeth Rush
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, this powerful elegy for our disappearing coast "captures nature with precise words that almost amount to poetry" (The New York Times).
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 is neither imagined nor distant―and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.
Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice―a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago―with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins.
"Timely and urgent, this report on how climate change is affecting American shorelines provides critical evidence of the devastating changes already faced by some coastal dwellers. Rush masterfully presents firsthand accounts of these changes, acknowledging her own privileged position in comparison to most of her interviewees and the heavy responsibility involved in relaying their experiences to an audience... . In the midst of a highly politicized debate on climate change and how to deal with its far-reaching effects, this book deserves to be read by all." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Deeply felt ... Rush captures nature with precise words that almost amount to poetry; the book is further enriched with illuminating detail from the lives of those people inhabiting today's coasts... . Elegies like this one will play an important role as people continue to confront a transformed, perhaps unnatural world." ―New York Times
"Rush rises. She brings stories out of the woodwork, revealing the true effect of sea level rise on the land, on the sea, and on people. She writes from a generation not asking if climate change is true or not, but how to live in the face of it, how we adapt, lose, or gain. Logging the finest, most intuitive details, Rush holds her subjects in tight focus, each coastline conveyed down to its grains of sand and inflections in the tides. Her writing is present among relocations and dying swamps, conveying the intricate nature of sea level rise. How do levees work? What does saltwater do to a freshwater aquifer? What voices are coming out of the wrack line, and what does it sound like as a coast is rewritten? Rush makes real a monolithic subject often too large to digest. You can taste the coming salt." ―Craig Childs, author of The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild
"Rising is not just a book about rising sea levels and the lost habitats and homes―it's also a moving rumination on the rise of women as investigative reporters, the rise of tangible solutions, the rise of human endeavor and flexibility. It is also a rising of unheard voices; one of the eloquent beauties of this book is the inclusion of various stories, Studs Terkel-style, of those affected most by our changing shoreline. A beautiful and tender account of what's happening―and what's in store." ―Laura Pritchett, author of Stars Go Blue
This information about Rising was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Elizabeth Rush's journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper's, Guernica, Granta, Orion, and the New Republic, among others. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants including the Howard Foundation Fellowship, awarded by Brown University; the Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellowship for Pedagogical Innovation in the Humanities; the Metcalf Institute Fellowship; and the Science in Society Journalism Award from the National Association of Science Writers. She received her MFA in nonfiction from Southern New Hampshire University and her BA from Reed College. She lives in Rhode Island, where she teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.
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