John McPhee

 

Annals of the Former World
by John A. McPhee
In 1978 New Yorker magazine staff writer John McPhee set out making notes for an ambitious project: a geological history of North America, centered, for the sake of convenience, on the 40th parallel, a history that encompasses billions of years. In 1981 he published the first of the four books ... Read More

Assembling California
by John McPhee
Listed under Geology by McPhee

Alaska: Images of the Country
by Galen Rowell (Photographer), John McPhee
Listed under Alaska: Photography

The Control of Nature
by John McPhee
(Paperback - September 1990)

The Curve of Binding Energy
by John A. McPhee
Theodore B. Taylor was among the most ingenious engineers of the nuclear age. He created the most powerful and the smallest nuclear weapons of his time (his masterpiece, the Davy Crockett, weighed in at a svelte 50 pounds) and also spearheaded efforts to create a nuclear-powered spacecraft. But in his later years, Taylor became increasingly concerned that compact and powerful bombs could be easily built not just by nations employing experts such as himself, but by single individuals with modest technical ability and perseverance. McPhee tours American nuclear installations with Taylor, and we are treated to a grim, eye-opening account of just how close we are to witnessing terrorist attacks using homemade nuclear weaponry. The Curve of Binding Energy is compelling writing about an urgently important topic. Amazon.com
(Hardcover - May 1974)
 

The Founding Fish by John McPhee Paperback from Farrar Straus & Giroux

Encounters With the Archdruid
by John A. McPhee
(Paperback - September 1990)
 

Levels of the Game by John McPhee Book Description: This account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968 begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games. Paperback from Noonday Press 1979

The Pine Barrens
by John A. McPhee, James Graves (Illustrator)
(Hardcover - June 1968)

Rising from the Plains
by John McPhee
Part three of McPhee's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the geology encountered along the fortieth parallel as it traverses the United States. Listed under Geology by McPhee

In Suspect Terrain
by John McPhee
Listed under Geology by McPhee

Irons in the Fire
by John McPhee
(Hardcover)

Levels of the Game
by John A. McPhee
(Paperback - December 1979)

Headmaster: Frank L.Boyden of Deerfield
by John McPhee
(Paperback - April 1985)

John McPhee Reader
by John McPhee, William L. Howarth (Editor)
(Paperback - April 1985)

The Second John McPhee Reader
by John A. McPhee, et al
(Paperback)

Heirs of General Practice
by John McPhee
(Paperback - March 1986)

Basin and Range
by John McPhee
One of the most valuable tools for the advancement of geological science has in fact been the humble road cut. United States Interstate 80 crosses the entire North American continent, in the process exposing hundreds of millions of years of geological history. In Basin and Range, McPhee, accompanied at times by Princeton geologist Kenneth S. Dreyfuss, demonstrates how the contorted and tilted rocks seen in these road cuts reveal how islands of the earth's crust have floated across the earth's surface, crashing and folding to form basin and range. This is a masterful and sometimes even poetic volume of popular writing about plate tectonics, communicating the profound satisfaction of using scientific research as a tool for understanding the world around us. This is the first of four books on North American geology by McPhee, collectively entitled Annals of the Former World. The other volumes are In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California. - Amazon.com
Listed under Geology by McPhee

Coming into the Country
by John McPhee
Residents of the Lower 48 sometimes imagine Alaska as a snow-covered land of igloos, oil pipelines, and polar bears. But Alaska is far more complex geographically, culturally, ecologically, and politically than most Americans know, and few writers are as capable of capturing this complexity as John McPhee. In Coming into the Country, McPhee describes his travels through much of the state with bush pilots, prospectors, and settlers, as well as politicians and businesspeople who have their eyes set on a very different future for the state. - Amazon.com
Listed under Alaskan Travel Books

Looking for a Ship
by John McPhee
(Paperback - September 1991)

Pieces of the Frame
by John McPhee
(Paperback - May 1979)

The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
by John McPhee
Listed under Airships

Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles
by John McPhee
(Paperback - June 1985)

A Sense of Where You Are
by John McPhee
First published in 1965, A Sense of Where You Are is the literary equivalent of a harmonic convergence, a remarkable confluence of two talents--John McPhee and Bill Bradley--at the beginning of what would prove to be long and distinguished careers. While McPhee would blossom into one of the best nonfiction writers of the last 35 years, Bradley segued from an all-American basketball player at Princeton, to Rhodes Scholar, to NBA star, to three terms in the U.S. Senate. McPhee noticed greatness in Bradley from the start; the book is an extension of a lengthy magazine profile McPhee wrote early in Bradley's senior year; the title comes from Bradley always knowing his position in relation to the basket. What's so noteworthy about the book is the greatness it promised--both for writer and for subject, a greatness both have delivered through the years again and again. Amazon.com
Paperback: 144 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.68 x 8.28 x 5.57 
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux; (June 30, ) 
ISBN: 0374526893 

Oranges
by John A. McPhee
(Paperback - April 1991)

The Survival of the Bark Canoe
by John McPhee
In an age of mass-produced and disposable objects, traditional crafts are becoming extinct, and appreciation for craftsmanship has become a hobby for the wealthy dilettante. But here and there, a few stalwart individuals carry on the old traditions. Henri Vaillancourt of Greenville, New Hampshire is in large part responsible for the continuing survival of the birch bark canoe. McPhee tells the story not only of Vaillancourt and his work, but of the canoe's role in American history. Many McPhee fans consider this lovely and lucid book one of his finest works. Amazon.com
Listed under Canoeing

The Princeton Anthology of Writing: Favorite Pieces by the Ferris/McGraw Writers at Princeton University.
by John A. McPhee (Editor), Carol Rigolot (Editor)
(Paperback)

The Ransom of Russian Art
by John A. McPhee
The story of Norton Townshend Dodge, a professor of economics who smuggled large quantities of dissident art out of the Soviet Union. Db
Listed undedr Russian Art

Giving Good Weight
by John A. McPhee
Book Description: "You people come into the market—the Greenmarket, in the open air under the down pouring sun—and you slit the tomatoes with your fingernails. With your thumbs, you excavate the cheese. You choose your stringbeans one at a time. You pulp the nectarines and rape the sweet corn. You are something wonderful, you are—people of the city—and we, who are almost without exception strangers here, are as absorbed with you as you seem to be with the numbers on our hanging scales." So opens the title piece in this collection of John McPhee's classic essays, grouped here with four others, including "Brigade de Cuisine," a profile of an artistic and extraordinary chef; "The Keel of Lake Dickey," in which a journey down the whitewater of a wild river ends in the shadow of a huge projected dam; a report on plans for the construction of nuclear power plants that would float in the ocean; and a pinball shoot-out between two prizewinning journalists.
(Hardcover - December 1979)

La Place De La Concorde Suisse
by John McPhee
(Paperback)

Crofter and the Laird
by John McPhee
Book Description: When John McPhee returned to the island of his ancestors—Colonsay, twenty-five miles west of the Scottish mainland—a hundred and thirty-eight people were living there. About eighty of these, crofters and farmers, had familial histories of unbroken residence on the island for two or three hundred years; the rest, including the English laird who owned Colonsay, were “incomers.” Donald McNeill, the crofter of the title, was working out his existence in this last domain of the feudal system; the laird, the fourth Baron Strathcona, lived in Bath, appeared on Colonsay mainly in the summer, and accepted with nonchalance the fact that he was the least popular man on the island he owned. While comparing crofter and laird, McPhee gives readers a deep and rich portrait of the terrain, the history, the legends, and the people of this fragment of the Hebrides. 
(Paperback - September 1978)
Out of Print

John McPhee (Twayne's United States Authors Series, No 674)
by Michael Pearson
(Hardcover)

Table of Contents
by John McPhee
(Paperback)