Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

Rush reports on sea-level rise with a blend of scientific clarity and deep human attention. The book travels along American coastlines, meeting people already living in the future—where flooding is routine and relocation is looming. Rush writes with calm urgency, resisting disaster porn while still making the stakes feel real. She's attentive to inequality: who gets protected, who gets bought out, who is left behind. The narrative shows climate change not as a single event but as a slow, relentless reshaping of daily life. Rush balances policy and emotion, explaining the bureaucratic and psychological realities of retreat. The writing is lyrical in places, but always anchored in reportage. Communities feel distinct rather than interchangeable, each with its own history and vulnerabilities. The book also probes the ethical questions of adaptation: what we save, what we abandon, and what "home" means when land disappears. You finish with a sharper sense of climate change as lived experience. Quietly devastating, deeply necessary.