The Beaches

The incredibly popular New York Times bestseller—a compelling story of the friendship of two unique women—is back! The story opens in 1951 as two young girls meet on the beach of Atlantic City. Cee Cee Bloom is performing in a kiddie show and Bertie White who has grown up in a conservative family is drawn to the glitter of Cee Cee’s world. They become pen pals and keep in touch as they grow ito adulthood. Cee Cee soars to stardom in Hollywood and on Broadway, while Bertie settles into marriage and family. Through the years they share the ups and downs that are everyone’s life. There are failed marriages, motherhood, lost opportunities and wonderful moments. The story ends in 1983 with a heartfelt goodbye and the message that there is something that last forever: friendship.

The story of our separate and unequal America in the making, and one man's fight against it During the long, hot summers of the late 1960s and 1970s, one man began a campaign to open some of America's most exclusive beaches to minorities and the urban poor. That man was anti-poverty activist and one‑time presidential candidate Ned Coll of Connecticut, a state that permitted public access to a mere seven miles of its 253‑mile shoreline. Nearly all of the state's coast was held privately, for the most part by white, wealthy residents. This book is the first to tell the story of the controversial protester who gathered a band of determined African American mothers and children and challenged the racist, exclusionary tactics of homeowners in a state synonymous with liberalism. Coll's legacy of remarkable successes--and failures--illuminates how our nation's fragile coasts have not only become more exclusive in subsequent decades but also have suffered greater environmental destruction and erosion as a result of that private ownership.

Take this book to the beach; it will open up a whole new world. Illustrated throughout with color photographs, maps, and graphics, it explores one of the planet’s most dynamic environments—from tourist beaches to Arctic beaches strewn with ice chunks to steaming hot tropical shores. The World’s Beaches tells how beaches work, explains why they vary so much, and shows how dramatic changes can occur on them in a matter of hours. It discusses tides, waves, and wind; the patterns of dunes, washover fans, and wrack lines; and the shape of berms, bars, shell lags, cusps, ripples, and blisters. What is the world’s longest beach? Why do some beaches sing when you walk on them? Why do some have dark rings on their surface and tiny holes scattered far and wide? This fascinating, comprehensive guide also considers the future of beaches, and explains how extensively people have affected them—from coastal engineering to pollution, oil spills, and rising sea levels.

"The ultimate guide to all of Eleuthera's 135 beaches" --Cover.

In these and seven other stories, The Beach Book gathers a seminal selection of fiction set on beaches around this big glue globe. Internationally acclaimed authors and emerging voices have all written eloquently about the sea's siren song. This book is completely waterproof. Put it right in your beach tote along with your sunscreen and beach ball!

Come along with me and learn all about reading! Brian P. Cleary's wacky sentences and Jason Miskimins's colorful art will make phonics fun! Find activities, games, and more at www.brianpcleary.com.

The irresistible novel that was adapted into a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The Khao San Road, Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach." The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden. Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents. Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.

Our beaches are eroding, sinking, washing out right under our houses, hotels, bridges; vacation dreamlands become nightmare scenes of futile revetments, fills, groins, what have you—all thrown up in a frantic defense against the natural system. The romantic desire to live on the seashore is in doomed conflict with an age-old pattern of beach migration. Yet it need not be so. Conservationist Wallace Kaufman teams up with marine geologist Orrin H. Pilkey Jr., in an evaluation of America's beaches from coast to coast, giving sound advice on how to judge a safe beach development from a dangerous one and how to live at the shore sensibly and safely.

"The most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off." THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE They are the last generation, the innocent victims of an accidental war, living out their last days, making do with what they have, hoping for a miracle. As the deadly rain moves ever closer, the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end....

The examples in this book show how words can be used to inspire, to comfort, to move, or to enthuse even the most seemingly hard-bitten of listeners.