Tabula Rasa

A literary legend's engaging review of his career, stressing the work he never completed, and why.

Over seven decades, Pulitzer Prize-winner John McPhee has set a standard for literary nonfiction. Assaying mountain ranges, golf balls, and every organic and inorganic thing in between, he has established himself as our paramount craftsman of the playful and the precise, constructing immaculately designed inquiries into the collisions of science, nature, and their human materials.

In Tabula Rasa, Volume 1, McPhee looks back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, retrieving, revising, and reflecting wryly upon work he never completed or published; in so doing, he offers us a rich and rewarding mosaic of a writing life. He recalls lunch with Thornton Wilder, dinner with Henry Luce, and watching fireworks from Malcolm Forbes's yacht; investigates the leaning tower of Pisa and the corruption of the college basketball timeout; travels through Spain and the islands of central California; and reflects on the challenges of writing about science, teaching in a pandemic, and persuading The New Yorker to publish an entire book on oranges. The result is a fresh survey of McPhee's singular planet, and a brisk and entertaining introduction to his peerless work.