Between Stony Brook Harbor Tides: The Natural History of a Long Island Pocket Bay

Readers opening Between Stony Brook Harbor Tides will likely to have two questions in mind. First, where is this place? Since a location map is missing from the book. Second, who is the intended readership? This is a very detailed scientific description of Long Island Pocket Bay and its complete natural history, including its geology, oceanography, flora and fauna, human impact, governance, and its future. This is a good reference book for local libraries, researchers, environmental workers, and perhaps naturalists, but the average reader will have very little, if any, interest in opening its pages. We have detailed information on such subjects as the history of dredging the harbor, tides, sand mining, and navigations. Yet these are of interest to whom? Authors Lawrence Swanson and Malcolm Bowman are both academics and did an admirable job researching their subject matter in this trade paperback. They included a number of small black-and-white photos as illustrations, but the quality is poor and grainy, and it’s difficult to decipher anything in them. The charts and tables are better.