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Author Wells, Jamin, author

Title Shipwrecked : coastal disasters and the making of the American beach / Jamin Wells
Published Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2020]

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Description 1 online resource
Contents 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
Summary "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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Shipwrecks -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Coasts -- United States -- History
Beaches -- United States -- History
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Disasters & Disaster Relief.
Beaches
Coasts
Shipwrecks
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781469660929
146966092X