by John McPhee
This book is about people living in places where nature is in a state of constant change, and the extraordinary lengths they go to try to control the ultimately uncontrollable forces. It would be funny if it was fiction. A sheriff survives the inundation of his neighborhood by a massive debris slug ...
McFee looks at three huge public works project, the damning and redirectioning of the Mississippi via ongoing construction, primarily by the Army Corps of Engineers; attempts in Iceland to redirect the flow of large volumes of lava away from a town by spraying massive amounts of water at the flow ed...
John McPhee chronicles three epic battles of man versus nature with some damn fine writing. The essay about Icelanders trying to save their land from a volcano was the highlight of the book for me when I read it for a literary journalism seminar in grad school.
The message is the medium of The Control of Nature. In a series of three essays, each regarding a different geographical region, McPhee shows that in the war between man and nature it's a case of the humans on horseback facing a blitzkrieg of geological heavy artillery. What amazes McPhee, and thus ...
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