Coming into the Country: Amazon.ca: Books

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My bandanna is rolled on the diagonal and retains water fairy well. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt

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13 Reviews

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5.0 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars The Portable Alaska, Dec 6 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Coming into the Country (Paperback)

McPhee lets the reader feel just how huge Alaska is-almost wider than the mind. From geological to political history Coming into the Country shows how it got that way. I picked this up at the airport in Fairbanks, and kept it in my pack to savor after returning to the wilds of Philadelphia. McPhee's sense of adventure and storytelling, his close interaction with the people and the land, make this the Portable Alaska.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Growing Up in the Country, July 2 2001

By

Eartha Lee (Denali Park, AK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coming into the Country (Paperback)

In the late 1970's my mother and father were inspired by John McPhee's Coming Into the Country to the point of venturing out onto the open highway. I was but two years old, headed across America, from Georgia to Alaska, towards Eagle, the tiny community that McPhee discusses with a keen eye in the third section of his book. I spent my childhood in that community and it would not be until I was fully grown that I would actually read his book. Just a couple of years ago, when I was attending college in Georgia, I became homesick for Alaska and decided to read the book that had been so impressive to my parents. I was amazed by McPhee's way of seeing the truth in something foreign to him -- how he described the people of Eagle. I highly recommend this book to all those who wish to venture into the land of Alaska, whether in their actual travels or in their imagination.

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5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding work of reportage, Feb 5 2001

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E. Hawkins (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Coming into the Country (Paperback)

Again and again we hear it, but it's true: John McPhee can interest a reader in anything. He manages to combine a richly sedimented prose, which frequently rises to a level of virtuosity of which 95% of novelists would be envious, with a tangible involvement in the activities of the people he writes about. And he does always write, first and foremost, about people. 'Coming into the Country' is McPhee's longest single book and contains about ten capsule biographies (and quite a bit of modest autobiography, too) in addition to observations on the hibernation of bears, the various techniques of panning for gold, the advantages of sled-dogs against snow-machines, the failings of bush-pilots, and three-dozen other disquisitions.

Without wishing to carp, I do think that the book is a shade too long -- the final section 'Coming into the Country' could profitably have been pruned of about forty pages -- but the greater length does allow the reader to see the effort McPhee goes to to provide his stories with an aesthetically pleasing structure. The first section, 'The Encircled River' deposits us, in medias res, halfway down a tributary of one of Alaska's northenmost rivers. McPhee and his companions travel downriver to the confluence of a larger river, and then we head back to the headwaters of the earlier river -- the story describes an encircling pattern. The second part 'What they were looking for' is a very funny record of a helicopter trip taken by a committee established to decide on a new capital for Alaska. Here the story skips around the theme as the chopper skips around proposed sites for the new metropolis. It's in the final section which gives the book its title that McPhee really lets loose, leaping from the present to the past, from those living on the river to those encamped in the small town of Eagle, back to the Indian village, on to a white mountain trapper and his Indian wife, back to the first goldrush era in the Yukon valley, all the time incorporating off-the-record views of Eagle townspeople, journal entries, his own observations of the breathtaking landscape. It's a tour-de-force. McPhee is the best journalist in the English-speaking world. Alaska is a wonderful place. The meeting of the two is something to behold.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books from one of America's best writers
John McPhee, it's often noted, can write about anythying and make it interesting, so when he tackles a subject as broad and fascinating as Alaska you know you're in for a... Read more

Published on May 3 2000 by Michael J Edelman

5.0 out of 5 stars Alaska, an enigmatic state(of mind)
Mcphee's Coming into the Country is one of those rare books which provides the reader with incredible insight as well as being a darn good read. Read more

Published on Mar 24 2000 by M. S. Ulbricht