Synopses & Reviews
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.
John McPhee is the author of more than 25 books, including Annals of the Former World, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction in 1999. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1965 and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were both nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science.
The Control of Nature is John McPhee's bestselling account of places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature. In Louisiana, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has declared war on the lower Mississippi River, which threatens to follow a new route to the sea and cut off New Orleans and Baton Rouge from the rest of the United States. Icelanders confront flowing red lava in an attempt to save a crucial harbor. In Los Angeles, basins are built to catch devastating debris flows from the San Gabriel Mountains.
Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies 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 herstubborn, sometimes foolhardy, more often ingenious, and always arresting characters.
"All three elemental battles recounted by the masterly McPhee are unified by the most uncontrolled and stubborn of all forces: human nature."R. Z. Sheppard, Time
"It is difficult to put these stories aside. If the stories bear witness to the ultimate triumph of nature over human engineering, they also testify to the triumph over art over nature."Stephen J. Pyne, The New York Times Book Review (front page)
"This book is unmistakable McPhee: the silky narrative, with keen detail and sharp dialogue, the finely drawn characters, the nimble metaphors."Stephen MacDonald, The Wall Street Journal
"Some of [McPhee's] passages left me gasping for breath . . . This book gave me more pure enjoyment than anything I've read in a long time."Christopher Shaw, The Washington Post Book World
Review
“All three elemental battles recounted by the masterly McPhee are unified by the most uncontrolled and stubborn of all forces: human nature.” --R. Z. Sheppard,
Time“It is difficult to put these stories aside. If the stories bear witness to the ultimate triumph of nature over human engineering, they also testify to the triumph of art over nature.” --Stephen J. Pyne, The New York Times Book Review (front page)
“This book is unmistakable McPhee: the silky narrative, with keen detail and sharp dialogue, the finely drawn characters, the nimble metaphors.” --Stephen MacDonald, The Wall Street Journal
“Some of his passages left me gasping for breath…This book gave me more pure enjoyment than anything I've read in a long time.” --Christopher Shaw, The Washington Post Book World
Synopsis
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.
About the 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. Also in 1965, he published his first book,
A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written nearly 30 books, including
Oranges (1967),
Coming into the Country (1977),
The Founding Fish (2002),
Uncommon Carriers (2007), and
Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters
with the Archdruid (1972) and
The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals
of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.