University of North Carolina Press, 2010

Picture books come in a variety of forms but ultimately most of them serve the same purpose: they are gift books, and once the wrapping is off and the pages flipped, they are destined too often to gather dust on a coffee table. In the case of The Coasts of Carolina, a collaboration by photographer Scott Taylor and writer Bland Simpson, this fate would be unfortunate, because the book rewards the reader as much as the viewer.