McPhee's books are about real people in real places. Over the past eight years, McPhee has spent considerable time in the company of people who work in freight transportation. This 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, eighteen-wheel chemical tanker carrying hazmats. He 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 Illinois River on a 'towboat' pushing a triple string of barges, the overall vessel being 'a good deal longer than the Titanic.' And he travels by canoe up the canal-and-lock commercial waterways traveled by Henry David Thoreau and his brother, John, in a homemade skiff in 1839.--From publisher description.The author recounts his experiences with freight transportation workers he has encountered during rides between Atlanta and Tacoma, from an eighteen-wheel hazmat tank operator to the skipper of a twenty-foot scale model of an ocean liner.

Product Description: 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 had ever seen. McPhee delineates for the reader the training and techniques that made Bradley the extraordinary athlete he was, and this part of the book is a blueprint of superlative basketball...read more

A biography of Bill Bradley, the noted American basketball player (view table of contents)

Reveals the clandestine activities of an American professor who retrieved eight thousand works of Soviet art by visiting dissident artists in the Soviet Union

While reviewing the life, interests, and achievements of theoretical physicist Theodore B. Taylor, warns of the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe resulting from the fabrication of atomic bombs by individuals using stolen materials

Writings completed between 1975 and 1979 offer portraits of the farmers who sell their produce in New York City's markets, a Maine river journey that ends in the shadow of a dam, a shootout between two pinball wizards, and an extraordinary chef and his wife

Examines how a militia of six hundred and fifty thousand civilians, whose eligibility for service lasts until they are in their fifties, can function as a defensive military organization

Recounts a voyage of one of the last great American merchant ships, the 'Stella Lykes,' revealing a wealth of maritime lore as crew members tell stories of their careers on the ocean

Depicts the problems which ensue when a mining engineer, a resort developer, and a civil engineer alternately confront a militant conservationist

McPhee traces the geologic history of the region extending from eastern Utah to eastern California, juxtaposes descriptions of this terrain as it was eons ago with its contemporary features, and examines the plate tectonics revolution

Interweaves the botany and history of this citrus fruit, while providing an entertaining discussion of the people and events that have contributed to this industry

Narrates the events surrounding the 1968 championship tennis match at Forest Hills, focusing on the psychological game played by each of the opposing players, Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner

Collects eleven of the prolific writer's journalistic essays and stories which reflect his continuing interest in and involvement with conservation, Scotland, sports, and their advocates, residents, and participants