Islands in the Storm

by William Sargent

Redolent with wit, wisdom and common sense, Islands in the Storm tells the remarkable story of barrier beach island dwellers, before, during and after Hurricane Sandy. It presents the pungent reminder that at the present rate of sea level rise increase all of America’s 200 barrier beach communities will start disintegrating within the next few decades. This is a book you will not want to put down.

388 pages, Paperback

First published August 4, 2014

About the author

William (Bill) Sargent is a relative of the painter John Singer Sargent and a son of a former governor of Massachusetts. He was primed early for a career in politics, but since boyhood he was far more interested in science than in traditional forms of public service. Nonetheless, at Harvard University he declared himself a government major - a plan that gave way the day he had lunch at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, where huge plaster casts of dinosaur tracks and the smell of formaldehyde triggered in the freshman his inborn love of nature. Sargent immediately switched from government to biology.

Sargent is currently a consultant for the NOVA Science Series and has written eight books about science and the environment, including The House on Ipswich Marsh (UPNE, 2005); Storm Surge (UPNE, 2004); Sea Level Rising (Schifferbooks, 2004); Crab Wars: A Tale of Horseshoe Crabs, Bioterrorism, and Human Health (UPNE, 2002); A Year in the Notch: Exploring the Natural History of the White Mountains (UPNE, 2001); The Year of the Crab: Marine Animals in Modern Medicine (1988). His Shallow Waters: A Year on Cape Cod's Pleasant Bay (1981) received the Boston Globe Winship award for the best book about New England and was the basis for a NOVA film, The Sea Behind the Dunes, selected by the National Audubon Society as the best natural history film of the year.