Irons in the fire

Essays and criticism

Print length: 215 pagesFarrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997

Description

John McPhee gathers nonfiction encounters with people whose specialized knowledge reveals unexpected dimensions of familiar places and objects. The title essay sends a reporter from New Jersey to Nevada to investigate cattle brands, enforcement, and possible rustling. Elsewhere, McPhee explores how forensic geology can solve crimes and larger mysteries, visits an exotic-car auction where an interview subject takes over the narration, and considers a New Jersey forest, a blind writer-professor, and a California mountain of scrap tires. The closing piece follows repairs to Plymouth Rock while weaving together colonial history, geology, scientific dating, and cultural observation. Varied in subject and structure, the collection shows reporting driven by curiosity: each assignment opens into a study of expertise, landscape, material evidence, and the stories people attach to the physical world.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Descriptive · Essayistic · Journalistic

Pace

Variable

Tone

Cerebral · Reflective · Warm

Structure

Anthology

Focus

Character · Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

Knowledge and truthNature and environmentWork

About John McPhee

John McPhee is an American writer and a pioneer of creative nonfiction whose career has joined patient reporting to literary construction. After beginning at Time, he formed a long association with The New Yorker, where much of the material in his books first appeared, and he has taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University since 1974. His subjects range unusually widely: geology, engineering, conservation, commerce, transportation, regional life, and specialized scientific work. What holds this varied body of work together is his method. McPhee spends time with people who possess deep practical knowledge, renders character and place precisely, and builds complex explanations through scenes and journeys. Annals of the Former World turns travel with geologists along Interstate 80 into a continental history, while The Control of Nature examines efforts to contain powerful natural systems. In Encounters with the Archdruid and Coming into the Country, competing ideas about wilderness, development, and settlement emerge through observed encounters rather than authorial display. His prose makes difficult or obscure subjects approachable without simplifying their substance.