Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28523 in Books
• Published on: 1990-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.com Review
Master how-it-works writer John McPhee has instructed his readers in the arcana of how oranges are commercially graded, how mountains form, how canoes are built and oceans crossed. In The Control of Nature he turns his attention once more to geology and the human struggle against nature. In one sketch, he explores the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' unrealized plan to divert the flow of the Mississippi River into a tributary, the Atchafalaya, for flood control; in another, he looks at the ingenious ways in which an Icelandic engineer saved a southern harbor on that island from being destroyed by a lava flow; in a third, he examines a complex scheme to protect Los Angeles from boulders ejected from mountains by compression and tectonic movement. As always, McPhee combines a deep knowledge of his subject with a narrative approach that is wholly accessible; you may not have thought you were interested in earthquakes and flood control, but he gently leads you to take a passionate concern in such matters.

About the Author
John McPhee is the author of twenty-six books, including Annals of the Former World, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1965 and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Relevant as ever!
McPhee's book may not be new, but his point - that trying to control nature leads to unintended consequences - is a important today as it was when it was published. The section on the Mississippi is especially poignant, considering the damage that the delta has experienced. Peg

Can Man Ever Really Control Nature?
An intriguing book on man's efforts, as the title says, to control nature. The question is, can or will man succeed. The book leaves it open to conjecture, but does an excellent, though sometimes wordy job, of describing man's efforts...

The Mississippi River chapter badly needed a map to help the reader udnerstand perspective and location. Imagine New Orleans high and dry with what is now the Mighty Mississippi as a meara creed passing the French Quarter. hard to imagine, but possible, even probable...

The image of men using water hoses to cool and direct lava is, at first, unbelievable and incomprehensible, but it worked...and the chapter on California debris (not mud) slides is extremely enlightening....a good book to learn about nature and things you woudn't normally think about...

Recommended.

unfocused and boring
I was disappointed after reading this book. The author uses 10,000 words to describe things/man-made structures that could be better described by adding a simple illustration. The writing is not organized in sections/chapters. A lot of unnecessary information is added that renders the book boring and unfocused. It will take me a while to read another book by this author...