Coasting alone

Another one for the coast watcher has to be From Cape Cod to the Bay of Fundy: An Environmental Atlas of the Gulf of Maine by Philip Conkling (MIT Press, £42.50/$50, ISBN 0 262 03227 9). Using satellite images and aerial photographs, the book explores this rich environment from the thin “beauty strips”, stands of trees that camouflage industrial plantings, to the physical mechanisms that created and keep the unique character of this region. A clear explanation of how the data were obtained and what they mean is a bonus.