Here's a collection of diverse titles recommended by Oregon Shores' staffers. Click the title or the cover image to link to the seller's site, for more information, or to purchase the book. In most cases we link to Powell's Books in Portland, but you can usually find these titles at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, too.

Trail Guides

Day Hiking: Oregon Coast, by Bonnie Henderson

Mountaineers: "Thorough descriptions of every trail are supplemented by natural history sidebars that feature plants and animals hikers are likely to encounter. The text is divided into five distinct sections from north to south, and each section includes information on its portion of the Oregon Coast Trail, which runs from border to border."

Previously titled Exploring the Wild Oregon Coast, then 120 Hikes On the Oregon Coast, the 2007 Edition includes 6 new hikes and is in a completely revamped format. A quick guide lists outings by features such as walks or hikes to hidden beaches, along bay spits, to lakes, or across sand dunes.

100 Hikes / Travel Guide: Oregon Coast and Coast Range, 2nd Edition, by William L. Sullivan

Book Description: Welcome to the Oregon Coast -- 363 miles of cliff-edged capes, public beaches, wild rivers, sand dunes, rainforest, and coastal mountains. The new second edition of this popular guide to Oregon's Coast has everything you need to plan a trip or a hiking adventure, with detailed information about campgrounds, lighthouses, parks, towns, wildlife, and more than 185 trails. The book covers Washington's Long Beach peninsula and Northern California's Redwood Coast, too!

Oregon Coastal Access Guide, by Kenn Oberrecht

Publisher Comments: A complete and illustrated guide to the coast, the Access Guide offers a detailed north-to-south tour of Oregon's Pacific edge, with extensive mile-by-mile coverage of scenic U.S. Highway 101. It provides a convenient and reliable reference on where to go, how to get there, and what to expect.

Out Our Back Door: Driving Tours and Day Hikes in Oregon's Coos Region, 2nd Edition, by Tom Baake

Book Description: "Coos Bay outdoor writer Tom Baake explores the region's popular scenic spots and visits the "back road" places, with an emphasis on easy day-hikes and driving "loop" tours. Among destinations are the spectacular seaside gardens at Shore Acres State Park, the twin cascades at Golden and Silver Falls State Park, and South Slough, the nation's first protected estuary."

Oregon's Best Coastal Beaches: A Quick-Reference Guide, by Dick Trout

Powell's: "Beautiful and unique rock formations, crashing waves, and long stretches of pristine beaches. Oregon's coastline is one of the most beautiful and dramatic in the world. From Fort Stevens State Park at the mouth of the Columbia River to Crissey Field State Recreation Site on the southern border with California, Oregon's Best Coastal Beaches shares the facilities, amenities, and activities for beaches on the Oregon coast. Information provided for each beach, includes a scenic photo, accessibility, parking, camping, restrooms, phones, horseback riding, hiking, biking, tidepooling, whale watching, even an aerial shot that gives you the lay of the land and provides geographical reference to Highway 101 or other coastal roads. In Oregon's Best Coastal Beaches, you?ll find everything you need to explore and enjoy Oregon's beautiful coastline."

Flora and Fauna

Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest: A Photographic Encyclopedia of Invertebrates, Seaweeds and Selected Fishes, by Andy Lamb

Publisher Comments: "With 1,600 superb colour photographs of over 1,200 species, this is the most comprehensive collection of photographs of Pacific Northwest marine life ever published. It is designed to allow the reader to recognize virtually any coastal organism that might be encountered from southern Alaska to southern Oregon... Andy Lamb and Bernard Hanby have spent most of their lifetimes studying and recording Pacific Northwest marine life and have completed over 4,000 scuba dives between them. Some of the species included in this volume have never before been featured in print before. Colour-coded for quick reference and including a glossary and full index, this is a must-have for serious biologists, scuba divers, beachcombers or anyone interested in marine life and beautiful underwater photography."

The Northwest Coast: A Natural History, by Stewart T. Schultz

Publisher Comments: "The author's aim has been not to provide a conventional field guide -- there are many such available -- but rather to provide insights into the relationships among the sea and the land and the living creatures they support. Starting in the coastal waters with their populations of marine animals and seabirds, the author examines the successive habitats found landward, from seashore, estuaries, dune, and freshwater wetlands to the great temperate conifer forests so characteristic of the region."

Pacific Coast (Audubon Guide), by Bayard McConnaughey and Evelyn McConnaughey

Publisher Comments: "A comprehensive field guide, fully illustrated with color photographs, to the birds, plants, fishes, insects, seashore creatures, and other natural wonders of North America's western shores, from Alaska to southern California."

Pacific Seaweeds, by Louis Druehl

Book description: "With line drawings and vivid colour photographs, this easy-to-use book thoroughly documents every aspect of seaweed life, from species identification and seaweed biology to the essential - and often surprising - roles seaweed plays in the marine ecosystem and our everyday lives.

Clear and informative, and packed with comprehensive scientific information, interesting facts, further readings and even an assortment of tasty seaweed recipes, this unique and highly readable guidebook will appeal to marine biologists, amateur beachcombers and everyone in between."

Coastal Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest, by Elizabeth L. Horn

Synopsis: "With over 200 color photographs covering 164 plants, this guide introduces seaside visitors and residents to the most common wildflowers and flowering shrubs of the rugged Pacific shore."

The Ocean Environment

Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness, 2nd Edition, by David Helvarg

Powell's: "Synopsis: A panoramic, highly readable report on the state of America's coastlines and the ocean wilderness off our shores, by a veteran environmental journalist. Gives the inside scoop on issues that have become major talking points for Americans since the Katrina disaster."

The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime, by William Langewiecsche

Publisher Comments: "With typically understated lyricism, William Langewiesche explores this ocean world and the enterprises--licit and illicit--that flourish in the privacy afforded by its horizons. Forty-three thousand gargantuan ships ply the open ocean, carrying nearly all the raw materials and products on which our lives are built. Many are owned or managed by one-ship companies so ghostly that they exist only on paper. They are the embodiment of modern global capital and the most independent objects on earth--many of them without allegiances of any kind, changing identity and nationality at will. Here is free enterprise at its freest, opportunity taken to extremes. But its efficiencies are accompanied by global problems--shipwrecks and pollution, the hard lives and deaths of the crews, and the growth of two perfectly adapted pathogens: a modern and sophisticated strain of piracy and its close cousin, the maritime form of the new stateless terrorism."

The Pacific Northwest Coast: Living with the Shores of Washington and Oregon, by Paul D. Komar

alibris: "While the coast of the Pacific Northwest becomes ever more populated and developed, its beaches and cliffs continue to be altered by ocean currents and winter storms. Coastal oceanographer Paul Komar reminds readers of the area's geological and cultural history and the ever-present problem of erosion. He issues an urgent call for changes in shoreline management and attitudes toward development. 41 figures. 20 maps. 112 photos."

Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas, by Carl Safina

Powell's: "Part odyssey, part pilgrimage, this epic personal narrative follows the author's exploration of coasts, islands, reefs, and the sea's abyssal depths. Scientist and fisherman Carl Safina takes readers on a global journey of discovery, probing for truth about the world's changing seas, deftly weaving adventure, science, and political analysis."

Strand: An Odyssey of Pacific Ocean Debris, by Bonnie Henderson

Phillip Johnson: "Henderson’s book was inspired by her experiences as a CoastWatcher who adopted Mile 157, and has walked it for more than a decade. She traces the stories of discoveries she made on her mile, from a glass fishing float to a beached minke whale to a wrecked fishing vessel, and in so doing shows how her one mile of Oregon coast connects to the global ocean and the world. The book is a veritable hymn to both beachcombing and the idea behind CoastWatch, and will be of keen interest to all CoastWatchers and others fascinated by the shoreline."

Poetry, Politics, and Photography

Fire At Eden's Gate: Tom McCall and the Oregon Story, by Brent Walth

Review: "Tom McCall was one of the most vivid figures in recent American politics, and this book does justice to his ornery, visionary, outrageous, and inspiring life. Not just Oregonians, but anyone with a taste for outsized characters will enjoy this biography." -- David S. Broder

The Spirit of the Oregon Coast, by Suzanne and Bruce Watkins

A collection of images of the Oregon Coast.