John McPhee
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 over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), 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.
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Tours & Events
Meet the Author
October 7-24, 2017
Meet John McPhee as he reads from his new book Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process.
Promoting
Draft No. 4
The long-awaited guide to writing long-form nonfiction by the legendary author and teacher
Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer’s craft. In a series of playful, expertly...
Excerpt: Read
Author on the Web
John McPhee
Related Links
Books by the Author
Draft No. 4
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The long-awaited guide to writing long-form nonfiction by the legendary author and teacher
Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer’s craft. In a series of playful, expertly...
Available in:
Silk Parachute
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A WONDROUS NEW BOOK OF MCPHEE'S PROSE PIECES—IN MANY ASPECTS HIS MOST PERSONAL IN FOUR DECADES
The brief, brilliant essay "Silk Parachute," which first appeared...
Available in:
Uncommon Carriers
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This is a book about people who drive trucks, captain ships, pilot towboats, drive coal trains, and carry lobsters through the air: people who work in freight transportation. John McPhee rides from...
Available in:
The Founding Fish
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
John McPhee's twenty-sixth book is a braid of personal history, natural history, and American history, in descending order of volume. Each spring, American shad-Alosa sapidissima-leave the ocean...
Available in:
Annals of the Former World
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Pulitzer Prize-winning view of the continent, across the fortieth parallel and down through 4.6 billion years
Twenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across...
Available in:
A Sense of Where You Are
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
When John McPhee met Bill Bradley, both were at the beginning of their careers. A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee's first book, is about Bradley when he was the best basketball player Princeton...
Available in:
Irons in the Fire
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This acclaimed collection of essays begins with the title essay and a trip to Nevada, where, in the company of a brand inspector, John McPhee discovers that cattle rustling is not just history.
Available in:
The Ransom of Russian Art
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
In the 1960s and 1970s, an American professor of Soviet economics forayed on his own in the Soviet Union, bought the work of underground "unofficial" artists, and brought it out himself or arranged...
Available in:
The Second John McPhee Reader
John McPhee; Introduced by David Remnick
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This second volume of The John McPhee Reader includes material from his eleven books published since 1975, including Coming into the Country, Looking for a Ship, The Control of Nature,...
Available in:
La Place de la Concorde Suisse
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
La Place de la Concorde Suisse is John McPhee's rich, journalistic study of the Swiss Army's role in Swiss society. The Swiss Army is so quietly efficient at the art of war that the Isrealis...
Available in:
Giving Good Weight
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
"You people come into the market—the Greenmarket, in the open air under the down pouring sun—and you slit the tomatoes with your fingernails. With your thumbs, you excavate the cheese. You choose...
Available in:
The Curve of Binding Energy
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Theodore Taylor was one of the most brilliant engineers of the nuclear age, but in his later years he became concerned with the possibility of an individual being able to construct a weapon of mass...
Available in:
Assembling California
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis. The result of these...
Available in:
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the plane and the rigid airship - huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. John McPhee chronicles...
Available in:
The Headmaster
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Starting in 1902 at a country school that had an enrollment of fourteen, Frank Boyden built an academy that has long since taken its place on a level with Andover and Exeter. Boyden, who died in...
Available in:
The Crofter and the Laird
John McPhee, illustrated by James Graves
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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,...
Available in:
Looking for a Ship
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This is an extraordinary tale of life aboard what may be one of the last American merchant ships. As the story begins, Andy Chase, who holds a license as a second mate is looking for a ship. In less...
Available in:
Coming into the Country
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Coming into the Country is an unforgettable account of Alaska and Alaskans. It is a rich tapestry of vivid characters, observed landscapes, and descriptive narrative, in three principal segments...
Available in:
The Control of Nature
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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...
Available in:
Rising from the Plains
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Rising from the Plains is John McPhee's third book on geology and geologists. Following Basin and Range and In Suspect Terrain, it continues to present a cross section of North...
Available in:
Table of Contents
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Table of Contents is a collection of eight pieces that range from Alaska to New Jersey, describing, for example, the arrival of telephones in a small village near the Arctic Circle and the...
Available in:
Heirs of General Practice
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Heirs of General Practice is a frieze of glimpses of young doctors with patients of every age—about a dozen physicians in all, who belong to the new medical specialty called family practice....
Available in:
In Suspect Terrain
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
From the outwash plains of Brooklyn to Indiana's drifted diamonds and gold In Suspect Terrain is a narrative of the earth, told in four sections of equal length, each in a different way reflecting...
Available in:
The John McPhee Reader
John McPhee; Edited with an Introduction by William L. Howarth
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The John McPhee Reader, first published in 1976, is comprised of selections from the author's first twelve books. In 1965, John McPhee published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are;...
Available in:
The Survival of the Bark Canoe
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
In Greenville, New Hampshire, a small town in the southern part of the state, Henri Vaillancourt makes birch-bark canoes in the same manner and with the same tools that the Indians used. The Survival...
Available in:
Basin and Range
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The first of John McPhee's works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern...
Available in:
Levels of the Game
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968 begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee...
Available in:
A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
In this unique book, John McPhee takes us into the world of several fascinating people. His inimitable style reveals the intricate details of his characters lives.
Available in:
Pieces of the Frame
John McPhee
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pieces of the Frame is a gathering of memorable writings by one of the greatest journalists and storytellers of our time. They take the reader from the backwoods roads of Georgia, to the high...
Available in:
The Pine Barrens
John McPhee, illustrated by James Graves
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Most people think of New Jersey as a suburban-industrial corridor that runs between New York and Philadelphia. Yet in the low center of the state is a near wilderness, larger than most national parks,...
Available in: