The American Shad: Selections from the Founding Fish

by John McPhee, John Rice (Illustrator)

We are pleased to announce this collection of pieces from John McPhee's The Founding Fish in an elegant, beautifully illustrated Meadow Run Press edition. The Pulitzer Prize winning author is a national treasure--the author of twenty-six books. With vivid and spirited prose, McPhee masterfully weaves together the shad's natural history, his own angling history with the fish, along with the history of the early American settlers and the critical importance of this fish to their very existence.

This is a large and compelling story. The misery and hunger of George Washington's troops at Valley Forge are palpable through McPhee's pen, as is their joy and salvation in the annual shad migration up the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. Early Philadelphia comes alive with vendor's shouts of "Shad-e-o! Shad-e-o!" announcing newly-arrived fish. And with fly rod in hand, the author travels to the Miramichi in advance of the Atlantic salmon run for some remarkable, memorable shad fishing--unknown to most fly fishermen.

An Edition of 500 Copies Signed by the Author

Genres: Nonfiction

88 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Susan Mazur Stommen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly entertaining for a book about fish...