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Nothing in the world is like reading John McPhee. One of the most extraordinary writers in the world. Highly recommended.
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John McPhee Reader #2
The Second John McPhee Reader
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This second volume of The John McPhee Reader includes material from his eleven books published since 1975, including Coming into the Country, Looking for a Ship, The Control of Nature , and the four books on geology that comprise Annals of the Former World .
393 pages, Hardcover
First published February 28,1996
This edition
- Format
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393 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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February 28, 1996 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- ISBN
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9780374256869
- ASIN
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0374256861
- Language
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English
About the author
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John Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 35 votes)
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35 reviews All reviews
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Loved the stuff about people interacting with landscape, or other people, found some of the geology heavy going. Liked his sense of humour.
Finished this as part of the Read Harder book challenge, as "recommended to me", someone game me this when I graduated from uni, and I had never even opened it. I'm not big on non-fiction, and liked it more than I thought I would.
Finished this as part of the Read Harder book challenge, as "recommended to me", someone game me this when I graduated from uni, and I had never even opened it. I'm not big on non-fiction, and liked it more than I thought I would.
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One of my favorite all time authors of non fiction. Everything he writes about, even subjects I wouldn't consider reading about and didn't know I might be interested in, are enjoyable to discover through his words!
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Interesting and entertaining writing style but I don't find it compelling. May try a full novel before I give up on reading additional works by McPhee.
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John McPhee is a magical wordsmith. The scope of his interests is astounding.
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McPhee is one of my favorite nonfiction writers, partly for his topical excursions and partly for his beautiful language. This collection culls selections from many of his books. He surely is the only person I could think of that could write something interesting about being a green grocer. I wasn't wild about the geography stuff. Hanging with the Swiss army was cool. A good introduction, especially to older work, if you consider trying him.
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McPhee is one of my favorite authors -- especially for non-fiction -- and I have been enjoying his work for years in The New Yorker. This Reader consists of a collection of excerpts from certain of his essays and book-length works, and it is hit and miss. Some of the excerpts, such as the ones from Coming Into the Country, about Alaska, and La Place de la Concorde, about the Swiss Army (and, by extension, Switzerland), are by turns fascinating and incredible. Others, such as Giving Good Weight, while not particularly captivating as regards their storyline, are nonetheless vintage McPhee and are enjoyable if for no other reason than his inimitable style. But the excerpts taken from the geology books are just harder for me to get enthused about. I don't know what it is in particular about these excerpts, but they just don't come alive like so much of his work. I'm disinclined to chalk it up to subject matter, since he has revealed the interesting inner workings of many other apparently mundane subjects. But something's missing for these, it seems. If you're interested in reading McPhee at length elsewhere, I recommend Uncommon Carriers, Control of Nature, or The Headmaster.
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Pre-read all but last segment Ransom of Russian Art of which 30 pages now read
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