Overview
Adam Nicolson explores the marine life inhabiting seashore rock pools with a scientistās curiosity and a poetās wonder in this beautifully illustrated book.
The sea is not made of water. Creatures are its genes. Look down as you crouch over the shallows and you will find a periwinkle or a prawn, a claw-displaying crab or a cluster of anemones ready to meet you. No need for binoculars or special stalking skills: go to the rocks and the living will say hello.
Inside each rock pool tucked into one of the infinite crevices of the tidal coastline lies a rippling, silent, unknowable universe. Below the stillness of the surface course different currents of endless motionāthe ebb and flow of the tide, the steady forward propulsion of the passage of time, and the tiny lifetimes of the rock poolās creatures, all of which coalesce into the grand narrative of evolution.
In Life Between the Tides, Adam Nicolson investigates one of the most revelatory habitats on earth. Under his microscope, we see a prawnās head become a medieval helmet and a group of āwinklesā transform into a Dickensian social scene, with mollusks munching on Stilton and glancing at their pocket watches. Or, rather, is a winkle more like Achilles, an ancient hero, throwing himself toward death for the sake of glory? For Nicolson, who writes āwith scientific rigor and a poetās sense of wonderā (The American Scholar), the world of the rock pools is infinite and as intricate as our own.
As Nicolson journeys between the tides, both in the pools he builds along the coast of Scotland and through the timeline of scientific discovery, he is accompanied by great thinkersāno one can escape the pull of the sea. We meet Virginia Woolf and her Waves; a young T. S. Eliot peering into his own rock pool in Massachusetts; even Nicolsonās father-in-law, a classical scholar who would hunt for amethysts along the shoreline, his mind on Heraclitus and the other philosophers of ancient Greece. And, of course, scientists populate the pages; not only their discoveries, but also their doubts and errors, their moments of quiet observation and their thrilling realizations.
Everything is within the rock pools, where you can look beyond your own reflection and find the miraculous an inch beneath your nose. āThe soul wants to be wet,ā Heraclitus said in Ephesus twenty-five hundred years ago. This marvelous book demonstrates why it is so.
Includes Color and Black-and-White Photographs
This book title, Life Between the Tides - 9781250862952, ISBN: 9781250862952, by Adam Nicolson, published by Picador (February 21, 2023) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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