Four Seasons at the Shore: Photographs of the Jersey Shore

New Jersey's shoreline gets the royal treatment in this robust collection of color photographs. Though heavy on images depicting Long Beach Island and Barnegat Bay, the book does offer images of beaches from Sandy Hook to Absecon, with the majority of the photos showing people fishing, sailing, sunbathing, surfing, eating ice cream and engaging in other beach activities. The book's summer section is a riot of people and color, while winter, spring and fall are more pensive, showing images of abandoned skiffs pulled ashore and Asbury Park's deserted amusement park. The essays-largely personal, though still accessible to the general reader-address the region's wildlife and landscape, the onslaught of part-time residents in July and August, and tasks such as looking for driftwood to make a fall fire and hanging wet beach towels on the clothesline to dry. Quotes from Bruce Springsteen songs and Walt Whitman poems complete this handsome volume.