Coastlines

'One of our finest young historians' Daily Telegraph 'Capacious, entertaining and rich in wondrous detail' Tom Holland on Metropolis Walking along a shingle beach on the Essex coast, Ben Wilson finds an auroch jawbone: the remains of an extinct type of cattle that once prowled the English coastline.Wilson takes us on a four-billion year journey across the world's coastlines - from pre-historic caves in South Africa to modern herring-fishing in Alaska, showing how these in-between spaces were a crucial site of human evolution and history. Leaving no pebble unturned, he weaves history, anthropology, science, and ecology into a stunning narrative, introducing us to our earliest semi-aquatic ancestors, Venetian princes, Barbary pirates and saucy seaside tourists.Coastlines offers an inspiring account of one of the most overlooked elements of our geographical heritage: the space between land and sea.