‘Spirals in Time’: the many secrets of seashells

In “Spirals in Time,” English marine biologist Helen Scales delivers a worldwide survey and history of seashells, as well as a warning of the havoc human predation and global warming are wreaking on these age-old denizens of the sea.

“Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells”

by Helen Scales

Bloomsbury, 304 pp., $27

When I was a preschooler, a relative gave me a beautiful triton shell. Knobby and pale-rose on the outside, kitten’s-mouth pink on the inside, the shell was a palm-size wonder to my 4-year-old self. I wanted badly to know: How did the sound of the ocean get inside it? How did it become such a beautiful color? What made it? I eventually learned that a…