Obi Kaufmann – The Coasts of California

California’s coastline is world-famous, an endless source of fascination and fantasy, but there is no book about it like this one.

Obi Kaufmann, author-illustrator of The California Field Atlas and The Forests of California, now turns his attention to the 1,200 miles of the Golden State where the land meets the ocean.

Bursting with color, The Coasts of California is in Kaufmann’s signature style, fusing science with art and pure poetic reverie. And much more than a survey of tourist spots, Coasts is a full immersion into the astonishingly varied natural worlds that hug California’s shoreline.

With hundreds of gorgeous watercolor maps and illustrations, Kaufmann explores the rhythms of the tides, the lives of sea creatures, the shifting of rocks and sand, and the special habitats found on California’s islands.

At the book’s core is an expansive, detailed walk down the California Coastal Trail, including maps of parks along the way—a wealth of knowledge for any coast-lover. The Coasts of California is a geographic epic, an odyssey in nature, a grand and glorious book for a grand and glorious part of the world.

Growing up in the Bay Area as the son of an astrophysicist and a psychologist, Artist-adventurer Obi Kaufmann regularly journeys into the Golden State’s wilds, spending more summer nights without a roof than with one. He is the author of The California Field Atlas (#1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller), The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Natural Resource, and The Forests of California, published by Heyday. His most recent opus, The Coasts of California blends his signature watercolors and poetic prose to explore the West Coast’s world-famous coastline, with an eye ever turned toward ecological repair and revitalization.