I liked the stories, but it seemed to trail off at the end. I listened to the audiobook, and McPhee's voice is pleasant.

“On the horizon there were no trees. Deer and antelope were everywhere at play, much too young to care what had happened to the range..."
-- John McPhee, Uncommon Carriers



McPhee is one of my favorites. I think his strongest form is the long-essay and I love his collections that are thematic. Uncommon carriers delivered exactly what I wanted with a bunch of surprises. Like always, McPhee is able to mix together great characters, fantastic observations, and a real sense of space and place and tell a story that illuminates some place or time that you have probably driven past without noticing a hundred times before.

McPhee has a a geologist's curiosity and patience (and a poet's pen) that allows him to spend an inordinate amount of time with a story to get that one detail that turns a good essay about boats into a fantastic essay about the craft of work, the beauty of place, the magnificence of the ordinary. The magic of McPhee isn't just that he writes new journalism almost better than anyone else on the planet, it is that he does more of it than almost anyone else. Up McPhee's other sleeve is his ability to make you want to follow him on his explorations. He isn't going to chase down your interests (rock stars, movies, money). Instead, McPhee is going to carefully let you follow him down his rabbit holes and help you onto his hobby-horses.

I would also be remiss if I didn't include a part of one of my favorite paragraphs. A barge McPhee is on, is flashed by a woman on a pleasure boat on the Missouri river. Here is McPhee's response:

She has golden hair. She has the sort of body you go to see in marble. She holds her poise without retreat. In her ample presentation there is a defiance of gravity. There is no angle of repose. She is a siren and these are her songs. She is Henry Moore's "Oval with Points".

My current favorite nonfiction writer. Reads like magazine articles, but it's a collection of short essays about transportation in America: trucks, barges, trains, UPS. I skipped the chapter on a canoe ride, but otherwise I really enjoy his voice and topics. They seem boring at first, but he includes fascinating characters and details that make it hard to put down.

I really enjoyed this book.... trucks, riverboats, trains.... I learned a good bit while listening to the stories.... John McPhee has yet to let me down.

Fine read, but not as captivating as I had hoped.

I've had this book on my shelf for like ten years and finally read it cover to cover. It's great and diverting. I think it might be a little dated now, but it's a great insight into parts of American life that not a lot of people in my line of work understand though it's very essential to all I do. I highly recommend it.

Perfectly timed reading, as McPhee explains the Suez canal in the McPhee Way. Perhaps the best journalistic writer America has ever produced.

This might be a little outdated now, but it gives a great overview of the nuts and bolts of forms of transportation in the U.S., as told through the people who make them run.

Lesser McPhee, which probably suffers from being an assemblage of mostly articles written for the New Yorker. Some of which are excellent, a few of which are adequate, one of which (A week on the concord and merrimack rivers) I just could not slog through. All loosely (and imperfectly) tied together with the theme of commercial transport, but the whole just doesn't make up any more than the sum of its parts.

For 35 years I did what I did (fairly enjoying the first 34). John McPhee, in this book, lets me imagine a few other trades: Tony in the cab of an 18-wheeler, carrying hazmat; Tony pushing a thousand feet of (15) barges up the "tight-assed" Illinois River; Tony sorting packages in a UPS center, letting UPS pay for my college; Tony in a coal train, wearing a T-shirt that says, "UNION FISH STRIKE MORE". On my days off, I'd paddle a canoe one week with my brother on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, just like those Thoreau boys once did, but with likely more beer. Forget that I'd wreck, crash, get my head severed in a quick stop. I'm reading; and I can do anything.

No, this did not make me want to take a course on operating an ocean liner, which McPhee did; but I indulged myself in meeting wonderful characters -- better than fictional ones.

Like the hazmat driver who turns to McPhee and says, "Do you know of a writer named Joan Didion?" (McPhee: I was too shy to say, "Take the 'of' out.") He's read McCarthy's The Border Trilogy three times because, like Moby-Dick, "you learn something new every time." He shares an argot (murdercycles, speedo (speeding ticket), lollipop (mile marker)) but also sprinkles in "paucity" and speaks of "circadian rhythms". McPhee tells us: He said "shit" and "fuck" probably no more than you do.

And I learned stuff.

I learned that the French coined the name "Illinois" but "are not responsible for Ill Annoy."

I learned about the classic sound of locomotives:

As the clarinettist Skip Livingston e-mailed the tubist Tom Spain, "I've been listening carefully. The trains differ--different locomotives have different pitches to their horns. But I did hear one while I was moving snow on Sunday morning, and I was able to get to the piano before I lost the notes. They were A-sharp, E, and F-sharp below middle C, which made it sound like an F-sharp-7 chord (minus the C-sharp). The instruments that would come closest to the sound would probably be trombones."

I learned this about railroad grades:

The steepest mainline railroad grade in the United States is Saluda Hill, coming off the Blue Ridge of North Carolina at five per cent--a thousand vertical feet in four miles. It is not presently used. To get up it, trains were cut into thirds. To get down it, Dick Eisfeller says, "they were extremely careful, put it that way."

I learned that San Diego, thinking itself pretty, has few truck stops. "They have no support structure for trucks. The closest real truck stop east is at a casino sixty miles away. The closest to the north is Los Angeles County; to the south, in Mexico. To the west, nothing, for obvious reasons."

And I learned the difference between a Jehovah's Witness and the door of a Freightliner: You can close the door on a Jehovah's Witness.

“A Fleet of One” (chemical tanker) and “Coal Train” (coal train) are excellent, and “Tight-Assed River” (Illinois River barge)‘s great as well: Ainwright the trucker’s such a character and McPhee has some really interesting observations about the carriers’ cultures, the technical mastery of the operators, everyday details of the trades, the significance of each carrier. Skipped “Five Days on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”—absolute dud.

I tend to read fiction or history so this is a stretch for me. The book was gifted to me by a good friend so I was motivated to read it, more than usual. It did not hold my attention. I need a plot of some sort. This was an exposition of how trucks, boats, ships, trains, planes and especially shipping operate in the world. I had no idea. Well, I knew it was complicated. But McPhee lays it out as a combination of technology and highly orchestrated ballet. Modern travel on the Mississippi is still challenging past the age of the steamer. The coordination of trains is amazing. I never thought that it would be more challenging to manage trains than it is for air traffic controllers. (Those coordinating trains do not have the option of asking a train to gain altitude to pass or avoid another train!). The course on managing sea going tankers was amazing.... conducted in a small scale model to teach long tern anticipation of actions. Fascinating book. ---- I will never look at a commercial truck, ocean going tanker, river barge, freight train or other commercial modes the same again. The book was well written, although I had trouble keeping up with the jargon. At the same time it was key to making the people who make it work real. The complexity of what they do and the time spent becoming expert was impressive. At the same time, the author introduced us to real people who chose to make careers... or fell into these careers... and have seen dramatic changes over their lifetimes as the stakes grow. --- I only gave it 3 stars. I need a plot or story-line of some sort. But it is an excellent read for some one who loves to learn how things work.