A Celebration of the World’s Barrier Islands by Orrin H. Pilkey, with original batiks by Mary Edna Fraser, Columbia University Press, $44.95/£31, ISBN 0231119704 Reviewed by Jeff Hecht
I DISCOVERED barrier islands as a boy, when my family moved to one along the New Jersey shore. From a child’s perspective, I learned about the marshy wetlands between the island and the mainland, and the sandy beach facing the ocean. Later I visited others along the North Atlantic coast, from the hopelessly overbuilt Miami Beach and Atlantic City to the well-preserved Plum Island National Wildlife Refuge in Massachusetts.
They could…
