The John McPhee Reader
by John McPhee
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Description
In 1965, John McPhee published his first book, "A Sense of Where You Are"; a decade later, he had published eleven others. This reader is comprised of selections from those first twelve books.Tags
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Member Reviews
Good writing but somewhat outdated and perhaps excursive for today's readers. Try instead McPhee's "Annals of the Former World", Pulitzer Prize winner and a very solid five stars.
The master of nonfiction. I highly recommend any of his work to any serious reader who would like a sense of the world that is as practical as it is potent and magical. A rare combination, and McPhee finds the balance more consistently than any other writer I've read.
Laudable attention to detail! Writes about the orange industry with particular zest.
Stopped in the middle because my library hold expired, but I'd gladly check it out again and keep going down the line.
This is a selection of McPhee's writing before his Otto article in the New Yorker.
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Author Information

59+ Works 21,095 Members
McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with the New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. That same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with show more The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1969), The Crofter and the Laird (1969), Levels of the Game (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1972), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), The Curve of Binding Energy (1974), Pieces of the Frame (collection, 1975), and The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975). Both Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science Since 1977, the year in which McPhee received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and The John McPhee Reader and the bestselling Coming into the Country appeared in print, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has published Giving Good Weight (collection, 1979), Basin and Range (1981), In Suspect Terrain (1983), La Place de la Concorde Suisse (1984), Table of Contents (collection, 1985), Rising from the Plains (1986), Heirs of General Practice (in a paperback edition, 1986), The Control of Nature (1989), Looking for a Ship (1990), Assembling California (1993), The Ransom of Russian Art (1994), The Second John McPhee Reader (1996), and Irons in the Fire (1997). Annals of the Former World was published in 1998 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. McPhee has taught at Princeton as Ferris Professor since 1975. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1976
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 081 — Computer science, information & general works Anthologies and Quotations General collections in American English
- LCC
- AC8 .M266 — General Works Collections. Series. Collected works Collections. Series. Collected works Collections of monographs, essays, etc. American and English
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 536
- Popularity
- 55,450
- Reviews
- 6
- Rating
- (4.16)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 4



























































