This audio collection of essays and sketches is 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. The audiobook is a collection of McPhee's ideas that never came to fruition as books or magazine articles--topics such as his mother's autobiography, blind skiers, and lessons in geology. They're interesting and engaging. Gardner slows things down a bit when a passage is technical, such as a description of geomorphology. Otherwise, he carries the work along with an even pace and pleasant voice. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
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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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.
Tabula Rasa: Volume 1
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.
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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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940178398777 |
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Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
Publication date: | 07/11/2023 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
Age Range: | 12 - 17 Years |
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