SCIENCES

Life Between the Tides

Farrar. Feb. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780374251437. $30. NAT HIST
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Award-winning author Nicolson (The Seabird’s Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet’s Great Ocean Voyagers) combines poetry and marine life in his meditative look at the seashore near his home in the Scottish Highlands. Observing plants, animals and microorganisms in concert with seasons, tides and one another, he feels the slipperiness of seaweed; tastes the salt air; and listens to the rain and screeching birds. Nicolson builds three rock pools in the bay to watch firsthand as sandhoppers leap and anemones attack. The culture, traditions, and industry of people, both modern and ancient, play a role in this story as do the rocks and tides. Nicolson ties the work of naturalists, poets, philosophers, and current scientists into his contemplation of time, presence, and refuge.
VERDICT Nicolson’s lyrical history and description of one ecosystem is active, thoughtful, and inviting and will appeal to both the scientific and literary minded.
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