John McPhee

Early Life

• Born in Princeton, N.J., in 1931
• Graduated from Princeton University in 1953 with an English degree and spent time at Cambridge University.
• Began writing at Time, then became a staff writer at the New Yorker in 1965 and still writes for the magazine
• 1975: Became Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton

Books and Major Articles

• 1965: A Sense of Where You Are -- Bill Bradley, who was Princeton's senior basketball star at the time and later U.S. senator
• 1967: The Pine Barrens -- New Jersey wilderness area
• 1967: Oranges -- Florida's citrus industry
• 1969: Levels of the Game -- pro tennis and Arthur Ashe

Books and Major Articles

• 1974: The Curve of Binding Energy -- homemade atomic bomb
• 1976: The John McPhee Reader
• 1976: Coming into the Country -- Alaskan gold mining
• 1984: La Place de la Concorde Suisse -- Swiss army training exercises
• 1986: Rising from the Plains – geology of Wyoming

Books and Major Articles

• 1989: The Control of Nature -- controlling the Mississippi River
• 1990: Looking for a Ship -- merchant marine ship sailing for South America
• 1993: Assembling California – geology of California
• 1994: The Ransom of Russian Art -- American professor who smuggles former Soviet art

Books and Major Articles

• 1996: The Second John McPhee Reader
• 1997: Irons in the Fire -- collection of essays: anti-cattle rustling police; repairing Plymouth Rock; forensic geology; and an exotic car auction
• 1998: Annals of the Former World -- collection and updates of the geology books