William L. Howarth – författare

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.

Thoreau''s classic account of a river journey depicting the early years of his spiritual and artistic growthThis paperback edition of Henry D. Thoreau''s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers features an invaluable introduction by noted writer John McPhee. Unusual for its symbolism and structure, its criticism of Christian institutions, and its many-layered storytelling, this classic work was Thoreau''s first published book.In the late summer of 1839, Thoreau and his older brother John made a two-week boat-and-hiking trip from Concord, Massachusetts, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After John''s sudden death in 1842, Thoreau began to prepare a memorial account of their excursion. He wrote two drafts of this story at Walden Pond, which he continued to revise and expand until 1849, when he arranged for its publication at his own expense. The book''s heterodoxy and apparent formlessness troubled its contemporary audience, but modern readers have come to see it as an appropriate predecessor to Walden.