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Annals of the Former World
by McPhee, John
- Used
- near fine
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Near Fine/Near Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0374105200
- ISBN 13
- 9780374105204
- Seller
-
La Grande, Oregon, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. Association copy, inscribed on the half-title page: "For the city and the people of New Orleans, through the Levee of Books from Princeton University, Spring 2006, with heartfelt best wishes, John McPhee." Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. This copy was donated by McPhee to help the New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) rebuild after Katrina, which destroyed eight NOPL branches and damaged five others. Discarded library books were built into a model levee on Princeton's Firestone Plaza as a proxy for new books bought for NOPL, and notable Princeton authors contributed signed volumes. This is an eighth printing (1999), but one of McPhee's own copies. A remarkable association in light of McPhee's long essay "Atchafalaya" in The Control of Nature, which details the Army Corps of Engineers flood-gate diversion of water from the Atchafalaya River to maintain the navigable course of the Mississippi and keep it flowing towards New Orleans, which would otherwise be marooned. As McPhee wrote in that piece, first published in The New Yorker, "The Mississippi River, with its sand and silt, has created most of Louisiana, and it could not have done so by remaining in one channel. If it had, southern Louisiana would be a long narrow peninsula reaching into the Gulf of Mexico. Southern Louisiana exists in its present form because the Mississippi River has jumped here and there within an arc about two hundred miles wide, like a pianist playing with one hand frequently and radically changing course, surging over the left or the right bank to go off in utterly new directions." The failed levees that led to the Katrina disaster is, unfortunately, a testament to McPhee's prescience, a potent reminder of our inability to control nature. A near fine book with softening to corners and top and bottom of spine. Pages clean and tight. In a near fine jacket with light edge wear and a few creases to head and tail of spine. // Wood (+) River (=) Books specializes in place-based and environmental literature, with a special passion for association copies and notable inscriptions.
Synopsis
Annals of the Former World is a book on geology written by John McPhee and published in 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The book presents a geological history of North America, and was researched and written over the course of two decades beginning in 1978."Most mountain ranges around the world are the result of compression, of segments of the earth's crust being brought together, bent, mashed, thrust and folded, squeezed up into the sky-- the Himalaya, the Appalachians, the Alps, the Urals, the Andes. The ranges of the Basin and Range came up another way, The crust-- in this region between the Rockies and the Sierra-- is spreading out, being stretched, being thinned, being literally pulled to pieces. The sites of Reno and Salt Lake City, on opposite sides of the province, have moved apart fifty miles. The crust of the Great Basin has broken into blocks... irregular in shape. They... suggest stretch marks. Which they are."
Read More: Identifying first editions of Annals of the Former World
Reviews
On Nov 27 2010, Wyantry said:
All John McPhees series of boks on geology, collected into one volume; and this time WITH MAPS!Anyone that has read one or more of McPhees books on geology: 1] Basin and Range, 2] In Suspect Terrain, 3] Rising From The Plains, 4] Assembling California, and 5] Crossing The Craton will enjoy having these individual books in one collection.The Narrative Table of Contents is worth reading as well, in it McPhee explains the rationale and history of his more than twenty-year series of sojurns traversing North America along the line of Interstate 80, accompanying several different geologists.Several concepts of geology, from an explanation of the glaciation of New England, to the advent of Plate Tectonics explaining the accretion of California are explained in an entertaining essentially non-geological manner, with numerous literary references.As a geologist, I recommend this series of books to anyone with an interest in the land-forms and origin of North America.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Rural Hours
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- ABE-1642136837104
- Title
- Annals of the Former World
- Author
- McPhee, John
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Near Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0374105200
- ISBN 13
- 9780374105204
- Publisher
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1998
Terms of Sale
Rural Hours
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About the Seller
Rural Hours
Biblio member since 2023
La Grande, Oregon
About Rural Hours
Rural Hours (formerly Wood + River = Books, est. 2019) specializes in ecology, natural history, nature writing, the environment, environmental literature, and contemporary essay, with a special passion for association copies and notable inscriptions. We draw our name from the popular-but-then-forgotten book by Susan Fenimore Cooper (published in 1850), generally considered the first work of environmental creative nonfiction by a woman in the U.S. We are interested in challenging and expanding the canon of environmental literature and finding books that tell remarkable stories and illuminate the tradition of writing about place and natural history.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Association Copy
- An association copy is a copy of a book which has been signed and inscribed by the author for a personal friend, colleague, or...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Inscribed
- When a book is described as being inscribed, it indicates that a short note written by the author or a previous owner has been...
- Tail
- The heel of the spine.
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
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