The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed

The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708622
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the plane and the rigid airship - huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. John McPhee chronicles the perhaps unfathomable perseverance of the aircraft's sucessive progenitors

The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed

The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708622
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This is the fascinating story of the dream of a completely new aircraft, a hybrid of the plane and the rigid airship - huge, wingless, moving slowly through the lower sky. John McPhee chronicles the perhaps unfathomable perseverance of the aircraft's sucessive progenitors

The John McPhee Reader

The John McPhee Reader PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708584
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
The John McPhee Reader, first published in 1976, is comprised of selections from the author's first twelve books. In 1965, John McPhee published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are; a decade later, he had published eleven others. His fertility, his precision and grace as a stylist, his wit and uncanny brilliance in choosing subject matter, his crack storytelling skills have made him into one of our best writers: a journalist whom L.E. Sissman ranked with Liebling and Mencken, who Geoffrey Wolff said "is bringing his work to levels that have no measurable limit," who has been called "a master craftsman" so many times that it is pointless to number them.

Annals of the Former World

Annals of the Former World PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708460
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning view of the continent, across the fortieth parallel and down through 4.6 billion years Twenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States, he planned to describe a cross section of North America at about the fortieth parallel and, in the process, come to an understanding not only of the science but of the style of the geologists he traveled with. The structure of the book never changed, but its breadth caused him to complete it in stages, under the overall title Annals of the Former World. Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a multilayered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology and a masterpiece of modern nonfiction. Annals of the Former World is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.

A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles

A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708665
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In this unique book, John McPhee takes us into the world of several fascinating people. His inimitable style reveals the intricate details of his characters' lives. 1. Thomas P. F. Hoving 2. Euell Gibbons 3. M.I.T. Fellows in Africa 4. Robert Twynam, of Wimbledon 5. Temple Fielding

Pieces of the Frame

Pieces of the Frame PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708606
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Pieces of the Frame is a gathering of memorable writings by one of the greatest journalists and storytellers of our time. They take the reader from the backwoods roads of Georgia, to the high altitude of Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico; from the social decay of Atlantic City, to Scotland, where a pilgrimage for art's sake leads to a surprising encounter with history on a hilltop with a view of a fifth of the entire country. McPhee's writing is more than informative; these are stories, artful and full of character, that make compelling reading. They play with and against one another, so that Pieces of the Frame is distinguished as much by its unity as by its variety. Subjects familiar to McPhee's readers-sports, Scotland, conservation-are treated here with intimacy and a sense of the writer at work.

Looking for a Ship

Looking for a Ship PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429958111
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This is an extraordinary tale of life on the high seas aboard one of the last American merchant ships, the S.S. Stella Lykes, on a forty-two-day journey from Charleston down the Pacific coast of South America. As the crew of the Stella Lykes makes their ocean voyage, they tell stories of other runs and other ships, tales of disaster, stupidity, greed, generosity, and courage.

Uncommon Carriers

Uncommon Carriers PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780865477391
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
McPhee, in prose distinguished by its warm humor, keen insight, and rich sense of human character, looks at the people who drive trucks, captain ships, pilot towboats, drive coal trains, and carry lobsters through the air: people who work in freight transportation.

Giving Good Weight

Giving Good Weight PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708576
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
"You people come into the market—the Greenmarket, in the open air under the down pouring sun—and you slit the tomatoes with your fingernails. With your thumbs, you excavate the cheese. You choose your stringbeans one at a time. You pulp the nectarines and rape the sweet corn. You are something wonderful, you are—people of the city—and we, who are almost without exception strangers here, are as absorbed with you as you seem to be with the numbers on our hanging scales." So opens the title piece in this collection of John McPhee's classic essays, grouped here with four others, including "Brigade de Cuisine," a profile of an artistic and extraordinary chef; "The Keel of Lake Dickey," in which a journey down the whitewater of a wild river ends in the shadow of a huge projected dam; a report on plans for the construction of nuclear power plants that would float in the ocean; and a pinball shoot-out between two prizewinning journalists.

The Ransom of Russian Art

The Ransom of Russian Art PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708487
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
John McPhee's The Ransom of Russian Art is a suspenseful, chilling, and fascinating report on a covert operation like no other. It offers unprecedented insight into Soviet culture at the brink of the Union's collapse. In the 1960s and 1970s, an American professor of Soviet economics forayed on his own in the Soviet Union, bought the work of underground "unofficial" artists, and brought it out himself or arranged to have it illegally shipped to the United States. Norton Dodge visited the apartments of unofficial artists in at least a dozen geographically scattered cities. By 1977, he had a thousand works of art. His ultimate window of interest involved the years from 1956 to 1986, and through his established contacts he eventually acquired another eight thousand works—by far the largest collection of its kind. McPhee investigates Dodge's clandestine activities in the service of dissident Soviet art, his motives for his work, and the fates of several of the artists whose lives he touched.

The Curve of Binding Energy

The Curve of Binding Energy PDF Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708614
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Theodore Taylor was one of the most brilliant engineers of the nuclear age, but in his later years he became concerned with the possibility of an individual being able to construct a weapon of mass destruction on their own. McPhee tours American nuclear institutions with Taylor and shows us how close we are to terrorist attacks employing homemade nuclear weaponry.