Shipwrecked : coastal disasters and the making of the American beach / Jamin Wells.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The American coastal frontier -- Taming the beach: wreckers and wreck law on the Jersey shore -- Transforming the shore: tourism, lifesavers, and the rise of Quonnie -- Clearing the coast: Captain T.A. Scott, a "True American" -- Shipwreck and spectacle on the modern beach.

"Reframing the American story from the vantage point of the nation's watery edges, Jamin Wells shows that disasters have not only bedeviled the American beach--they created it. Though the American beach is now one of the most commercialized, contested, and engineered places on the planet, few people visited it or called it home at the beginning of the nineteenth century. By the twentieth century, the American beach had become the summer encampment of presidents, a common destination for millions of citizens, and the site of rapidly growing beachfront communities. Shipwrecked tells the story of this epic transformation, arguing that coastal shipwrecks themselves changed how Americans viewed, used, and inhabited the shoreline"-- Provided by publisher

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