Contrary to public perception, sand dunes are not barren piles of sand. They are alive with plant life. The dunes themselves even move, sometimes several inches a year. In Dune Country Janice Emily Bowers takes readers from New Mexico's White Sands to Utah's Coral Pink Dunes to the Death Valley dunes of California and beyond. Beautifully written and illustrated, Dune Country is a perfect introduction to the fragile ecosystems of sand dunes.

Complex sets of environmental factors have interacted over the past 5,000 years to affect how changes in climate, temperature, relative precipitation, and the levels of Lake Michigan influence the preservation of archaeological sites in coastal sand dunes along Lake Michigan. As a collaboration between earth scientists, archaeologists, and geoarchaeologists, this study draws on a wealth of research and multidisciplinary insights to explore the conditions necessary to safeguard ancient human settlements in these landscapes. A variety of contemporary and innovative techniques, including numerous dating methods and approaches, were employed to determine when and for how long sand dunes were active and when and for how long archaeological sites were occupied. Knowledge of dune processes and settlement patterns not only affects archaeological interpretations, but it is also consummately important to land planners responsible for managing heritage archaeological sites in the Lake Michigan coastal zone.

The Salt House is a beautifully observed and written memoir of a long summer's stay on the back shore of Cape Cod. Each chapter is like a prose poem, shedding increasing light on the challenge of finding "home" without the illusion of permanence, a quest based not on ownership but on affinity and familiarity with an area and its people. Cynthia Huntington expands her theme through images of the landscape, the shack, the new marriage. The shack, named "Euphoria," is built as a house set on stilts above the sand, to take the wind under it. Only a partial shelter, it is inhabited for only one season a year, yet it endures. The outer cape has the feel of a place for migrants and drifters -- for birds and other wildlife, and for people such as artists, fishermen, and coast guardsmen. A place where "year-round" often means several addresses. Similarly, her narrative describes improvised, fragile beginnings: a new marriage, learning to be at home in the world, becoming intimate with the natural world, without the necessity of settling down. The Salt House shares a world that is less natural history or memoir than it is neighborhood exploration -- the process of learning a place and becoming native to it.