I was expecting this to be a nature book about the ecological and geomorphological changes in beaches between winter and summer (a topic I find fascinating), but instead it's a travelogue about a road trip up and down the Atlantic beach towns in winter in 1966. Still interesting, especially to someone who knows those places forty years later (and loves slightly shabby americana almost as much as geomorphology) but spoiled by how much I wish it was something different. :P

I was especially taken by the ways in which he talks about environmental degradation, in a way that acknowledges the danger and evil of up, but faces the whole thing with a sort of resignation toward the inevitable destruction of our world that could have come right out of a modern environmentalist's essays. (It is also interesting to look at the things that got better faster than he expected - and the things that got worse faster.)