Annals of the Former World is the result of a 20-year journey. During that time, John McPhee, author of 25 books and noted writer for The New Yorker, crisscrossed the United States, roughly following the 40th parallel. The geological insights and wonderful descriptions McPhee packed into his accounts of these trips earned his remarkable book a Pulitzer Prize. The third part, Rising From the Plains, takes McPhee to the high country of Utah along the...

"The Patch is the seventh collection of essays by the nonfiction master John McPhee, all of them published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It is divided into two parts. The first, 'The Sporting Scene,' offers previously uncollected pieces on fishing, football, golf and lacrosse, among other topics. They range from fly-casting for chain pickerel in the fall in New Hampshire to walking the linksland of St. Andrews at a British Open championship. The second...

The Founding Fish is the shad, and John McPhee's veneration for it is both scientific and culinary. McPhee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. Noted for his accessible and perceptive studies of the physical world, he weaves together strands of personal, natural, and national history in this absorbing study that traces the shad's importance from the 17th century to his family's dinner table.

McPhee's account of geological field trips in the Great Basin, primarily in Nevada, in the company of geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes, including Deffeyes's search for recoverable silver from old mine sites

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism--this anthology brings together fifty works from all genres of creative nonfiction. --from back cover.