From a celebrated environmental journalist, the riveting exploration of sea level rise along the West Coast through human stories and ecological dramas.

Along California’s 1,200-mile coastline, the overheated Pacific Ocean is rising and pressing in, imperiling both wildlife and the maritime towns and cities that 27 million people call home. In California Against the Sea, Los Angeles Times coastal reporter Rosanna Xia asks: As climate chaos threatens the places we love so fiercely, will we finally grasp our collective capacity for change?

“Few people are more qualified to explain and analyze this landscape,” writes Science. “[Xia] breathes exquisite detail and dialogue into a rich narrative held up by years of beat reporting.”

Declared a 2024 Great Read from Great Places by the Library of Congress and winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, the California Book Award, and the Golden Poppy (voted on by more than 230 independent booksellers), California Against the Sea is a triumph of ecoreportage, an indispensable future-forward book that has earned a place among the pantheon of watershed environmental treatises.

“While largely focused on coastal erosion, California Against the Sea stokes a universal sense of urgency,” says Wesley Minter of Third Place Books (Seattle, WA). “This is a notable debut that deftly balances the hard realities of the present with a sense of pragmatic hope for the future.”