Few places are as familiar as the shore – & few as full of mystery & surprise.The Sea is not Made of Wateris an invitation to the shoreline. Anyone who chooses can look beyond their own reflection & find the marvellous there, waiting an inch beneath their nose.Adam Nicolsonexplores the multiple, interleaved layers of that world & the long human relationship with the shore.How do sandhoppers inherit an inbuilt compass from their parents? What is it that prawns know? How do crabs understand the tides?  How can the death of one winkle guarantee the lives of its companions?Connections animate the book. The physics of the seas, the biology of anemone & limpet,the long history of the earth itself, the governing myths and stories of those who have lived & survived here: all interconnect in the zone where philosopher, scientist & poet can meet & puzzle over the nature of what exists.The intertidal has been the scene for all kinds of scientific discovery – from the workings of evolution to the intricacies of biological networks. But its story is as much human asnatural history: how far should our own lives be understood as an aspect of ecology? Do our buried beliefs about the tidal sea reflect a fundamental understanding of our relationship to nature? And is it the shifting condition of thattidal world, its pervasive uncertainty, its fierce interfolding of opportunity & threat, that makes it one of the most emblematic & revelatory habitats on earth?°°°‘A remarkable & powerful book, the rarest of things ... Nicolson is unique as a writer ... I loved it’ — EDMUND DE WAAL‘Miraculous ... An utterly fascinating glimpse of a watery world we only thought we knew’ — PHILIP HOARE°°°Adam Nicolsonis the author of many books onhistory,travel& theenvironment. He is winner of the Somerset Maugham Award & the British Topography Prize & lives on at Sissinghust Castle in Kent.