John McPhee
author profile
born
March 08, 1931
gender
male
place of birth
Princeton, New Jersey, The United States
website
genre
Nonfiction, Outdoors & Nature, Science
about this author
John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was 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. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1968), Levels of the Game (1968), The Crofter and the Laird (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1971), 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 wit...more
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avg rating: 4.10
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| 54 distinct works
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More books by John McPhee…
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The Control of Nature by John McPhee avg rating 4.21 — 555 ratings — published 1989 6 editions |
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Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee avg rating 4.11 — 483 ratings — published 1971 5 editions |
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Coming into the Country by John McPhee avg rating 4.15 — 475 ratings — published 1976 8 editions |
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Basin and Range by John McPhee avg rating 4.08 — 341 ratings — published 1981 4 editions |
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Annals of the Former World by John McPhee avg rating 4.41 — 299 ratings — published 1998 3 editions |
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Oranges by John McPhee avg rating 4.11 — 295 ratings — published 1967 5 editions |
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The Pine Barrens by John McPhee avg rating 4.10 — 291 ratings — published 1967 8 editions |
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Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee avg rating 3.84 — 307 ratings — published 2005 4 editions |
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Assembling California by John McPhee avg rating 4.13 — 216 ratings — published 1992 3 editions |
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Rising from the Plains by John McPhee avg rating 4.24 — 170 ratings — published 1987 4 editions |
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upcoming events
No scheduled events.
"If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time. And then in a way you do not live at all, but in another way you live forever."
— John McPhee (Basin and Range)
— John McPhee (Basin and Range)
"If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.
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— John McPhee
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— John McPhee
"Now, at Suiattle Pass, Brower was still talking about butterflies. He said he had raised them from time to time and had often watched them emerge from the chrysalis--first a crack in the case, then a feeler, and in an hour a butterfly. He said he had felt that he wanted to help, to speed them through the long and awkward procedure; and he had once tried. The butterflies came out with extended abdomens, and their wings were balled together like miniature clenched fists. Nothing happened. They sat there until they died. 'I have never gotten over that,' he said. 'That kind of information is all over in the country, but it's not in town.'"
— John McPhee
— John McPhee
