The Human Shore

"In The Human Shore, John R. Gillis leads the reader on an interesting trip through time showing us how early humans led stable lives as hunter-gatherers at the edge of the sea, through the eras of coastwise exploration and industrialization, to today’s high priced, ocean-view and beach-front real estate. A readable consideration of the changing perceptions and utilization of the shore, The Human Shore will appeal to a variety of readers."

"Thoughtful, informed, and eloquent; in The Human Shore John Gillis has captured the human yearning for that fragile interface between land and sea. In the process, he reveals a dynamic environment quite at odds with humanity’s lust to possess nature. As Gillis so beautifully writes, we must learn “to live with rather than simply on our shores.”

“As populations crowd toward the ocean’s edge and the sea encroaches menacingly toward the land, John R. Gillis looks at the history of the world from a fresh perspective and enables readers to see it in a new light. That he has managed to do so in a single conceptual work is nothing short of astounding.”

"This provocative and wide-ranging book is a timely reminder that the relationship with the sea stands at the center of the history of humanity."

"In a detailed, expansive and wide-ranging history, John Gillis carefully examines the complex, uneasy, and continually evolving relationship between humans and the sea, asking us to reconsider some of our cherished assumptions. As ever increasing numbers of people return to crowd the fragile edge of the ocean, understanding this history is a must."

“Reaching back into the days when early hominids became human, The Human Shore also looks forward to what will happen if we don’t change how we relate to seacoasts. The book represents a fitting capstone to the career of a remarkable historian whose arc of interests has anticipated two key, entwined strands in his discipline—the rise of environmental history and global history—and whose work has long exemplified how, in our changing present, the ways we imagine the past can and must change as well. . . . As befits a historian who has ‘grown only more and more aware of how much history is an imaginative activity,’ what most distinguishes his work is the depth he brings to combining the arc of human imagination with its effects—to synthesizing our thinking about seacoasts with the material history of how those ideas will shape the prospects of the planet.”

"Recommend[ed]. . . . Gillis does an excellent job of portraying people’s evolving relationship with the shore and their eventual love affair with beaches, which was the last part of the shore to be settled."

“Gillis’s goal in his thoughtful and insightful essay is to provide some unity to the varied, diverse, and changing relationship between humans and the world’s oceans. He sets no small task for himself; ultimately, however, he succeeds, producing a concise volume that promises to become an important reference for most maritime scholarship to come.”

“Beginning with the appearance of modern Homo sapiens approximately 164,000 years ago, Gillis moves beyond the written records of conventional history to draw on insights from underwater archaeology, physical anthropology, and other fields. Boldly revising familiar narratives of human origins and development, he traces the cultural and material pasts of ‘our edge species.’ . . . Gillis ranges widely—crossing temporal and spatial boundaries, connecting “prehistory” to modern history, and touching down on coastal locales around the world. He does so with remarkable concision: this sophisticated, multimillennial narrative clocks in at just under 200 pages.”