North Carolina's Outer Banks are in constant motion, responding to weather, waves, and the rising sea level. Beaches erode, sometimes taking homes or sections of highway with them into the surf; sand dunes migrate with the wind; and storms open new inlets and dump sand in channels and sounds. A classic guide, The Nature of the Outer Banks describes these dynamic forces and guides visitors to sites where they can see these phenomena in action.

In the first section of the book, Dirk Frankenberg highlights three major processes on the Outer Banks: the rising sea level, movement of sand by wind and water, and stabilisation of sand by plant life. In the second section, he provides a mile-by-mile field guide to the northern Banks, and in the final section, he alerts readers to the dangers of overdevelopment on the Outer Banks. In a new foreword for this edition, Betsy Bennett documents the ever-more-critical situation of these shifting sands.