The four John McPhee books I most want to read are:
- Oranges - From the Amazon Review: “A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a short magazine article about oranges and orange juice, but the author kept encountering so much irresistible information that he eventually found that he had in fact written a book. It contains sketches of orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers, orange packers, early settlers on Florida’s Indian River, the first orange barons, modern concentrate makers, and a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida who may be the last of the individual orange barons. McPhee’s astonishing book has an almost narrative progression, is immensely readable, and is frequently amusing. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles, because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too—with elements in it that range from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a custom of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.” It’s a short book and it’s been recommended, and damnit, who doesn’t need to know more about oranges?
- La Place de la Concorde Suisse - From the Amazon Review: “Anyone who has ever traveled in Switzerland cannot help but to have remarked upon the overwhelming tranquility of the country. But this tranquility is illusory. As John McPhee writes in La Place de la Concorde Suisse, a rich journalistic study of the Swiss Army’s role in Swiss society, ‘there is scarcely a scene in Switzerland that is not ready to erupt in fire to repel an invasive war.’ With a population smaller than New Jersey’s, Switzerland has a standing army of 650,000 ready to be mobilized in less than 48 hours. The Swiss Army, known in this country chiefly for its little red pocketknives, is so quietly efficient at the arts of war that the Israelis carefully patterned their own military on the Swiss model. You’ll understand why after reading this outstanding book.” Did you know this? I didn’t know this.
- The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey Into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor - From the Amazon Review: “Theodore B. Taylor was among the most ingenious engineers of the nuclear age. He created the most powerful and the smallest nuclear weapons of his time (his masterpiece, the Davy Crockett, weighed in at a svelte 50 pounds) and also spearheaded efforts to create a nuclear-powered spacecraft. But in his later years, Taylor became increasingly concerned that compact and powerful bombs could be easily built not just by nations employing experts such as himself, but by single individuals with modest technical ability and perseverance. McPhee tours American nuclear installations with Taylor, and we are treated to a grim, eye-opening account of just how close we are to witnessing terrorist attacks using homemade nuclear weaponry. The Curve of Binding Energy is compelling writing about an urgently important topic.” This was written in 1994, pre-9/11 attacks, but I think it’s probably just as relevant and eye-opening today.
- The Crofter and the Laird - From the book description: “When John McPhee returned to the island of his ancestors—Colonsay, twenty-five miles west of the Scottish mainland—a hundred and thirty-eight people were living there. About eighty of these, crofters and farmers, had familial histories of unbroken residence on the island for two or three hundred years; the rest, including the English laird who owned Colonsay, were “incomers.” Donald McNeill, the crofter of the title, was working out his existence in this last domain of the feudal system; the laird, the fourth Baron Strathcona, lived in Bath, appeared on Colonsay mainly in the summer, and accepted with nonchalance the fact that he was the least popular man on the island he owned. While comparing crofter and laird, McPhee gives readers a deep and rich portrait of the terrain, the history, the legends, and the people of this fragment of the Hebrides.” I’m such a sucker for Scottish history (or any UK history, really). Plus, the graphic art on the cover—tartans!—gets me.
Bonus John McPhee: I’d also like to read Pieces of the Frame and Giving Good Weight, because I’m a sucker for a good essay, and I suspect that much John McPhee might do well in short form (hello, New Yorker).
Here’s the part where I might need to confess that I haven’t read any of John McPhee’s books. But his Oranges is on my summer list because it was recommended to me and because John McPhee is so respected. And with that many books out, I have a strong urge to start a John McPhee library. (Except I’m broke.) There’s no time like the present to start reading McPhee.
