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This is my first McPhee book. It will not be the last. It's not often that a book of essays would be placed in the "Couldn't Put It Down" category but this volume qualifies. The title refers to the opening essay which is focused on Brand Investigators, in an open range section of Nevada, whose job is to stop and/or catch cattle rustlers. I'm very familiar with ranching as my wife's family have been ranching in Montana for over 100 years. I was not, however, familiar with this kind of open range ranching where rustlers can operate and often do by altering the owner's brand or affixing their own brand to an unbranded calf. Totally fascinating! In the rest of the collection, McPhee writes of a blind author/professor who now uses a computer that can read back what he has typed and what a difference this has made in his life. He describes the last primeval forest left on the East Coast under the management of Rutger's university. He goes into great detail in another article describing how geologists were able to pinpoint from which beach the Japanese launched their infamous exploding balloons in 1944-45. In the same article he shows how FBI geologists work and particularly how they were able to prove the Mexican government was lying about who killed Enrique Camerena Salazar and where he was buried. He obviously has a fascination with forensic geology and rocks in particular. The last article in the book describes a repair effort on Plymouth Rock as well as speculating where the rock could have come from. In between is an article on auto and truck tires and what a problem they are for those tasked with getting rid of them but also how they might be profitably re-cycled. The penultimate article covers an exotic car auction in Pennsylvania. What separates his work from others is the detail he is able to elicit and then present in an interesting manner, his dry sense of humor and irony and the obvious affection he develops for those people he interviews and humanizes in a most unique way. All of the articles in this particular book, appeared first in the New Yorker magazine.

2022-11-16 05:01