John McPhee Overview

Depending on whom you ask, John McPhee is either the founder of narrative journalism or the savior of it; few, if anyone, would have any qualms with his writing or research.  His subjects range wildly, from oranges to Bill Bradley to farmers' markets to the Mississippi River.  Throughout this tremendous range, and present in each work of his equally tremendous output, runs constant the mind of an inquisitive and restless thinker.  His books often center on a particular issue, event, or person, but the narrative is anything but traditionally linear; instead, McPhee corrals as much information on the subject as he can into an often short and pithy volume, delivered in crystalline prose that the breadth of his research and the subtlety of his understanding save from simplification.  He is among the most consequential and important writers of the 20th and early-21st centuries, but, true to the understated, incisive appeal of his work, few associate him with such a designation.  It is a tribute to his abilities that most remember his work more than the writer behind it.