<![CDATA[Uncommon Carriers]]>

false <![CDATA[Uncommon Carriers]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156876224m/75.jpg 75 4 <div><div><div><b>What John McPhee's books all have in common is that they are about real people in real places. Here, at his adventurous best, he is out and about with people who work in freight transportation.</b> </div><div><br> </div></div><div>Over the past eight years, John McPhee has spent considerable time in the company of people who work in freight transportation. <i>Uncommon Carriers </i>is his sketchbook of them and of his journeys with them. He rides from Atlanta to Tacoma alongside Don Ainsworth, owner and operator of a sixty-five-foot,<br>eighteen-wheel chemical tanker carrying hazmats. McPhee attends ship-handling school on a pond in the foothills of the French Alps, where, for a tuition of $15,000 a week, skippers of the largest ocean ships refine their capabilities in twenty-foot scale models. He goes up the “tight-assed” Illinois River on a<br>“towboat” pushing a triple string of barges, the overall vessel being “a good deal longer than the <i>Titanic</i>.” And he travels by canoe up the canal-and-lock commercial waterways traveled by Henry David Thoreau and his brother, John,<br>in a homemade skiff in 1839.</div><div><br><i>Uncommon Carriers </i>is classic work by McPhee, in prose distinguished, as always, by its author’s warm humor, keen insight, and rich sense of human character.</div></div> 4439 2005 Uncommon Carriers total:353|5:68|4:174|3:90|2:18|1:3| 353 1345 514 81 4 1 false false Fri Aug 31 19:57:45 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 31 20:06:56 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Dec 16 09:58:58 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 16 10:00:17 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 24 06:34:29 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 24 06:37:10 -0800 2009
Jacket overview: "Over the past eight years, John McPhee has spent considerable time in the company of people who work in freight transportation. Uncomm...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jan 04 12:52:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 12:52:12 -0800 2009 There are two places in the world, home and everywere else,,and everywhere else is the same., 11 Jun 2006

There are two places in the world -- home and everywhere else, and everywhere else is the same.'

"The most beautiful truck on earth-Don A...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 22:55:38 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 22:55:38 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Feb 05 09:39:45 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:39:45 -0800 2009 Princeton University professor and essay writer John McPhee has a knack for spinning dull-sounding subjects into narrative gold. Innocuously titled tomes like the Pulitzer Prize?winning Annals of the Former World yield magnificent tales, baroque with exceptional details that make the curious giddy....

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Uncommon Carriers proves again that John McPhee is the modern master of the discursive essay.

Conversations with Don Ainsworth and his chemical tanker truck bookend a series of essays on the transportation trade. "Ainsworth's middle names could be 'Free Ass...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Dec 27 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 22:34:05 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 22:40:29 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Nov 29 07:12:00 -0800 2008 Sun Apr 12 12:41:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 10 07:05:27 -0700 2008 Mon Sep 29 06:55:39 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 02 01:30:06 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 02 01:32:14 -0800 2008
I read this as part of my quest to understand how everything is connected to everything else, and how it is economically feasible to create very inexpensive products by shipping materials all over th...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 22 22:13:22 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 15 19:38:38 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 27 10:48:42 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 27 17:46:08 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 18 16:31:01 -0700 2007 Wed Nov 14 11:35:19 -0800 2007 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Dec 30 09:06:45 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 30 09:06:45 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Sep 26 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 30 00:21:34 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 02 13:15:09 -0700 2008
Great nonfiction illuminates the unseen,...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jan 13 13:11:28 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 13 13:14:10 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Aug 22 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun May 27 06:16:50 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 22 16:50:03 -0700 2008 John McPhee on transportation, the environment and the economy. On the down side, it turns out that I've read every single one of these essays in the New Yorker, and the addition of his re...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Mar 16 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Nov 18 09:38:27 -0800 2007 Sat Apr 05 11:09:21 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=75