If you’re a typical connoisseur of books – especially the old-fashioned types with covers and paper pages in between those covers – then you know well that a well-designed, attractive book cover and its title are meant to gain your interest. But if you’re a more discerning reader and don’t know the author (whether personally or literarily), then you open that book. Some people go straight to the chapter titles to see what’s there, whereas others may turn to a random page and start reading. For those books with visual content, people normally flip through it to look at its photos or artwork. All of these are fine techniques for appraising a book before deciding whether or not it warrants whipping out your library card, or credit card, or if it deserves hours of your reading pleasure.
So with my new book, Tracking the Golden Isles: The Natural and Human Histories of the Georgia Coast (University of Georgia Press), you should do all of these tests and more. But because a most bookstores are still not allowing people inside their stores to physically handle their books, I’ll do a few of those tasks for you. For instance, I talked about its beautiful cover yesterday, so you got that. How about its contents? Well, here are the chapter titles, which should give you a good sample of topics covered in the book.
As you can tell from the book title and chapter titles, this book is nonfiction (I hope) and a natural history book. Moreover, it’s one that focuses on my research specialty of ichnology, the study of traces and trace fossils: tracks, burrows, nests, and more. The main theme of the book is how the stories told by traces give us a deeper sense of the intertwined natural and human histories of a place. And one of the best places I know for putting this principle in practice is the Georgia coast, where I’ve been studying its traces for more than 20 years.
The book is divided into four parts, with chapters in each of those parts like so:
Part I – Impressions of Past History: tells how traces are used to interpret geologic history.
Part II – Shells and Carapaces: stories told by invertebrate traces, such as clams, ghost crabs, ghost shrimp, horseshoe crabs, moon snails, crayfish, and wasps.
Part III – Beaks and Bones: stories told by vertebrate traces, such as alligators, toads, birds, moles, and otters.
Part IV – The Human Touch: stories told by traces of human influence, from invasive species, to Native Americans, to the enslavement of African peoples, to the ultimate human trace, climate change.
For those folks who like their nonfiction books with visuals, the book has a healthy number of those. Most are photos, and most are my photos, but a few other people’s photos are there, along with a few of my illustrations and one artwork. To keep the cost of the book affordable, it does not have any color photos or illustrations, but the figures are numerous and high-quality, which augment help to better teach the stories.
Still interested? Then you might think about getting the book, or ask a friend or relative get it for you, or ask your local library to get it. If you’re planning to buy it, I suggest you support your local independent bookstores by ordering it from them; many bookstores are offering home delivery or curbside pickup. But if that isn’t feasible, other options are listed below, with links to all. Thank you, and happy reading!
P.S. Helpful hint: if you purchase it before May 31 through the link at University of Georgia Press, you can get 50% off by using the coupon code there. Read books, but save money!
University of Georgia Press: Tracking the Golden Isles
Indiebound: Tracking the Golden Isles
Powell’s Books: Tracking the Golden Isles
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