Coming into the Country, John McPhee
Coming into the Country, John McPhee
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Coming into the Country

Author: John McPhee

Narrator: Nelson Runger

Unabridged: 16 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 04/29/2011


Synopsis

Coming into the Country is an unforgettable account of Alaska and Alaskans. It is a rich tapestry of vivid characters, observed landscapes, and descriptive narrative, in three principal segments that deal, respectively, with a total wilderness, with urban Alaska, and with life in the remoteness of the bush.

Readers of McPhee's earlier books will not be unprepared for his surprising shifts of scene and ordering of events, brilliantly combined into an organic whole. In the course of this volume we are made acquainted with the lore and techniques of placer mining, the habits and legends of the barren-ground grizzly, the outlook of a young Athapaskan chief, and tales of the fortitude of settlers—ordinary people compelled by extraordinary dreams. Coming into the Country unites a vast region of America with one of America's notable literary craftsmen, singularly qualified to do justice to the scale and grandeur of the design.

About John McPhee

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. 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. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, and in the years since, he has written over thirty books, including Oranges, Coming into the Country, The Control of Nature, The Founding Fish, Uncommon Carriers, and Silk Parachute. Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Graychin on November 22, 2017

A year or two out of college I was employed at a bookshop in Seattle, earning little more than minimum wage. For a change of scene, I signed up with some friends to work the salmon season at a cannery in Alaska. It was rough work, seven days a week, 8am to 11pm (or to 1am on nights when you had clea......more

Goodreads review by Jonfaith on October 01, 2024

One must follow the role of an uninvited visitor—an intruder—rather than that of an aggressive hunter, and one should go unarmed to insure this attitude. We were in Newfoundland a year ago, a lovely holiday and upon the world's most uncomfortable couch I found reruns of Northern Exposure. I loved the......more

Goodreads review by Keenan on April 13, 2017

A bit boring in some segments in the middle, but the book redeems itself with John McPhee's wonderful prose style and the fierce personalities of his subjects.......more