Books: Of Crabs and Men

BEAUTIFUL SWIMMERS by WILLIAM W. WARNER

304 pages. Atlantic-Little Brown.

$10.00.

Deep fried or steamed, the Atlantic blue crab is a gourmet's delight. William Warner's book about Callinectes sapidus (the creature's first name is Greek for beautiful swimmer, its last, Latin for tasty) is a reader's treat. Warner, a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution, has spent years studying the blue crab and his human harvesters in their natural habitat, Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. The result of his study is a piece of popular oceanography worthy of shelf space alongside Rachel Carson's classic Edge of the Sea and Henry Beston's Outermost House.

Warner, naturally enough, spends much...

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