Sunday, May 10, 2015

John McPhee, The Control of Nature *****

The Control of Nature comprises three accounts of man against nature: constraining the route of the Mississippi River, saving an Icelandic harbor from volcanic lava flows, and catching debris flows from the San Gabriel Mountains outside of Los Angeles. Engineers and scientists deploy a variety of creative and ambitious strategies against the powerful forces of water, lava, and rock.

All three sections feature clear explanations of the natural forces, the attempted solutions, and the escalating complications. They offer dramatic human-sized stories of individuals caught in the crossfire, such as the Genofile family nearly crushed in their home by a huge flow of debris. Fascinating details abound; for example:
As lava moves, under the air, it develops a skin of glass that is broken and rebroken by the motion of the liquid below, so that it clinks and tinkles, and crackles like a campfire...
All of it it told with John McPhee's idiosyncratic sense of organization, jumping between past and present unpredictably and occasionally confusingly.

Awesome all around. I learned a lot and enjoyed the drama.

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