Overview

"Over seven decades, John McPhee has set a standard for literary nonfiction. Assaying mountain ranges, bark canoes, experimental aircraft, the Swiss Army, geophysical hot spots, ocean shipping, shad fishing, and dissident art in the Soviet Union, among myriad other subjects, he has consistently written narrative pieces of immaculate design. In Tabula Rasa, McPhee looks back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, reflecting wryly upon projects he began but never completed or published. Collected and augmented, these pieces form a ""reminiscent montage"" of a writing life. This volume includes, among other things, a frosty encounter with Thornton Wilder, interrogative dinners with Henry Luce, glimpses of the allure of western Spain, fireworks over the East River as seen from Malcolm Forbes's yacht, the evolving inclinations of the Tower of Pisa, the islands in the river delta of central California, teaching in a pandemic, and persuading the New Yorker to publish an entire book on oranges. The result is a fresh survey of McPhee's singular planet."

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Reviews

"""A gem from an exemplar of narrative nonfiction."" -- ""Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"" ""A marriage of good storytellers. Author John McPhee has the ability to make topics like plate tectonics, commercial shipping, and life under Covid lockdown interesting, as well as informative. Combine that with the mellow voice of Grover Gardner, and you have a work that nearly any listener will enjoy...Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award."" -- ""AudioFile"" ""As he explores what might have been, Mr. McPhee also proves how enjoyable it can be to spend time with such an expert storyteller."" -- ""The Economist (London)"" ""Still more pleasingly consistent than any other writer working. There is never a dud metaphor, never a cliché."" -- ""Washington Post"" ""What do you do when your writing career lasts seven decades but you haven't said everything you once thought about saying? If you're John McPhee, you crack open your notebooks and give fans a taste of the stories you never wrote."" -- ""Associated Press"""

Author Information

"John McPhee is the award-winning author of thirty books, including Annals of the Former World, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Award in the category of science. He received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. 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. Grover Gardner has recorded more than 650 audiobooks since beginning his career in 1981. He's been named one of the ""Best Voices of the Century"" as well as a ""Golden Voice"" by AudioFile magazine. Gardner has garnered over 20 AudioFile Earphones Awards and is the recipient of an Audio Publishers Association Audie Award, as well as a three-time finalist. In 2005, Publishers Weekly deemed him ""Audiobook Narrator of the Year."" Gardner has also narrated hundreds of audiobooks under the names Tom Parker and Alexander Adams. Among his many titles are Marcus Sakey's At the City's Edge, as well as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and John Irving's The Cider House Rules. Gardner studied Theater and Art History at Rollins College and received a Master's degree in Acting from George Washington University. He lives in Oregon with his significant other and daughter."

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