John McPhee – 1931–

McPhee is a journalist who has written a series of popular books focusing on the environment and key aspects of technology and current events. Many of his works first appeared, at least in part, in The New Yorker. His first major book was a study of New Jersey’s surprisingly remote semi-wilderness, The Pine Barrens (1968). Alaska was profiled in Coming into the Country (1977), the citrus industry was the focus of Oranges (1967), aeronautics in The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), and nuclear terrorism in The Curve of Binding Energy (1974). During the 1980s he wrote a series of books on the geology of the American West.