Happy Birthday, John McPhee

Born March 8, 1931, Princeton, NJ

Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates the ninety-fourth birthday of nonfiction author, essayist, and professor of journalism John McPhee. A recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and the author of over thirty books, McPhee has contributed—since 1963—over 100 works of nonfiction to The New Yorker. His essays have been reprinted once in The Best American Essays series and listed as Notable thirteen times.

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John McPhee, circa 2009.

“Writing is selection. Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language.”

John McPhee at Princeton University. Photographer unknown.

“A piece of writing has to start somewhere, go somewhere, and sit down when it gets there.”

Pieces of the Frame (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975) is McPhee’s second collection of nonfiction and features essays about sports, conservation, and Scotland. Silk Parachute (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) collects nine essays that range in topic from golf to photography to geology. The Patch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) collects essays that range from a visit to the Hershey chocolate factory to encounters with Oscar Hammerstein, Joan Baez, and Mount Denali. In Tabula Rasa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), McPhee “looks back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, reflecting wryly upon projects he once planned to do but never got around to—people to profile, regions he meant to portray.”

First published essay:

• “Basketball and Beefeaters,” The New Yorker, 1963.

Select nonfiction bibliography:

• The John McPhee Reader, edited by William L. Howarth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976; reissued In 1982).

• The Second John McPhee Reader, edited by Patricia Strachan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996).

• “The Search for Marvin Gardens,” The Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Robert Atwan and Joyce Carol Oates (Mariner, 2000).

Essays by John McPhee reprinted (R) in The Best American Essays (BAE), or listed in Notables (N):

• Elicitation, The New Yorker, 2014 (BAE 2015, N).

• Editors & Publisher, The New Yorker, 2012 (BAE 2013, N).

• Progression, The New Yorker, 2011 (BAE 2012, N).

• The Patch, The New Yorker, 2010 (BAE 2011, N).

• Checkpoints, The New Yorker, 2009 (BAE 2010, N).

• “My Life List,” The New Yorker, 2007 (BAE 2006, N).

• “1839/2003” [“Paddling After Henry David Thoreau”], The New Yorker, 2003 (BAE 2002, N).

• “They're in the River,” The New Yorker, 2000 (BAE 2001, N).

• “Farewell to the Nineteenth Century,” The New Yorker, 1999 (BAE 2000, N).

• “Swimming with Canoes,” The New Yorker, 1998 (BAE 1999, N).

• “Silk Parachute,” The New Yorker, 1997 (BAE 1998, R)

• “Irons in the Fire, The New Yorker,” 1993 (BAE 1994, N).

• “Duty of Care,” The New Yorker, 1993 (BAE 1994, N).

• “Travels of the Rock,” The New Yorker, 1990 (BAE 1991, N).

See also:

Read “John McPhee, The Art of Nonfiction No. 3,” an interview, The Paris Review, 2010.

Listen to “An Hour with John McPhee,” The Colin McEnroe Show, Connecticut Public Podcasts, 2024.

Listen to “John McPhee on His Book Tabula Rasa,” NPR’s Weekend Edition, 2023,

Listen to an interview with John McPhee, on WPRB Princeton’s Discourse, 2007.