John McPhee
American journalist and non-fiction writer who made the New Yorker essay into a vehicle for exhaustive, richly detailed explorations of subjects as various as geology, Alaska, and the citrus industry. Annals of the Former World won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the most patient and thorough of American literary journalists.
Works
- Annals of the Former WorldGeological narrative trace of North American landscapes and deep time
- Coming into the CountryAccount of wilderness, frontier life, and political challenges in Alaska
- The Control of NatureEssays on human attempts to engineer nature and their unintended consequences
- The Pine BarrensPortrait of New Jersey's Pine Barrens ecosystem and its unique culture
- Assembling CaliforniaGeological account of California's formation and natural history and structure
- Rising from the PlainsGeological narrative of the Basin and Range landscape of western America