Readers also learn how Charles Lindbergh’s wife, aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was arguably an early feminist who wrote her bestselling book, “Gift From the Sea,” to explain how seashells became a calming influence on her. Castro was so fascinated with queen conchs, she points out, that the CIA had considered using them as booby traps in a 1963 assassination plot that was never carried out, according to declassified documents made public in 2017. There is one marvelous anecdote after another, such as how archeologists have unearthed scores of seashells at Pompeii, the ancient Italian city buried in volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted.Īnd the obsession with shells experienced by high-profile figures such as Rembrandt, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Nor did I consider the religious and economic power of shells over time, or that shells known as Lightning Whelk have been coveted because their spirals are one of the few that are formed counter-clockwise. I never really considered that, let alone considered there’s a whole realm of science known as conchology. There are few books I’ve read in recent years from which I’ve learned more.įirst, there’s the amazing science behind shells and how mollusks create them. Her writing and research have always been good, and she’s taken both up a notch, in a book which unfolds as a love affair with nature through the lens of mollusks and their seashells. Barnett’s incredible fourth book is a doozy. Historian Douglas Brinkley labels it “an instant classic of nature history” that, in the tradition of Rachel Carson, “enchantingly weaves poetic musings with deep-seated conservation wisdom and ocean science.” Davis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea,” calls fellow Floridian Cynthia Barnett’s latest work, “The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans.” “A book for the ages.” That’s what Jack E. “The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans”
BookShelf: The Call of the Conch - How Seashells Tell Nature’s Story
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