John McPhee Book order

A literary legend’s engaging review of his career, stressing the work he never completed, and why.

This wide-ranging essay collection serves as a covert memoir of a cult literary figure—New Yorker writer John McPhee.

'McPhee's genius is that he can write about anything.' - Robert Macfarlane

The long-awaited guide to writing long-form nonfiction by the legendary author and teacher. Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer’s craft. John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his long career, and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the most highly regarded writers of our time. He discusses structure, diction and tone, observing that ‘readers are not supposed to notice the structure. It is meant to be about as visible as someone’s bones’. This book is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from reporting to drafting to revising—and revising and revising. Draft No. 4 is enriched by personal reflections on the life of a writer. McPhee recalls his early years at Time magazine, and describes his enduring relationships with the New Yorker and with his publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Everything in this luminous book is enlivened by his keen sense of writing as a way of being in the world.

Plunge into the wild climate of unknown Alaska in this riveting travel account.

"This is a book about people who drive trucks, captain ships, pilot towboats, drive coal trains, and carry lobsters through the air: people who work in freight transportation. In recent years, John McPhee has spent considerable time with such people, and Uncommon Carriers is his sketchbook of them, of their work, and of his journeys in their company."--BOOK JACKET.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning view of the continent, across the fortieth parallel and down through 4.6 billion yearsTwenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States, he planned to describe a cross section of North America at about the fortieth parallel and, in the process, come to an understanding not only of the science but of the style of the geologists he traveled with. The structure of the book never changed, but its breadth caused him to complete it in stages, under the overall title Annals of the Former World.Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a multilayered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology and a masterpiece of modern nonfiction.Annals of the Former World is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.

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.

With his customary reportorial brilliance, John McPhee has written the story of the life and career of Theodore B. Taylor, a theoretical physicist who has been one of the most inventive nuclear scientists of our time.

The Control of Nature is John McPhee's bestselling account of places where people are locked in combat with nature. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strageties and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking is his depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those attempting to wrest control from her - stubborn, sometimes foolhardy, more often ingenious, and always arresting characters.