John McPhee

John McPhee began contributing to The New Yorker in 1963. He has written more than a hundred pieces for the magazine, among them a Profile of Senator Bill Bradley during his days as a Princeton basketball star, an examination of modern-day cattle rustling, and several multipart series on a wide range of subjects, including Alaska; a voyage on a merchant ship down the west coast of South America as a Person in Addition to Crew; a stint with the Swiss Army; and the writing process. Between 1955 and 1956, he wrote for television, before joining Time, where he contributed pieces about show business until 1964. He has taught writing at Princeton University since 1975, and in 1982 was awarded Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson Award for service to the nation. He is the author of twenty-eight books, all of them based on his New Yorker writings. Among them are “Coming Into the Country,” which was nominated for a National Book Award; “Encounters with the Archdruid”; “The Control of Nature”; “Looking for a Ship”; “The Ransom of Russian Art”; and “Annals of the Former World,” which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. His most recent books are “Uncommon Carriers,” and “Silk Parachute,” a collection of pieces ranging from North American lacrosse to the Cretaceous chalk of Europe.