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    Rising from the Plains
    Rising from the Plains
    Rising from the Plains
    Audiobook7 hours

    Rising from the Plains

    Written by John McPhee

    Narrated by Nelson Runger

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Annals of the Former World is the result of a 20-year journey. During that time, John McPhee, author of 25 books and noted writer for The New Yorker, crisscrossed the United States, roughly following the 40th parallel. The geological insights and wonderful descriptions McPhee packed into his accounts of these trips earned his remarkable book a Pulitzer Prize. The third part, Rising From the Plains, takes McPhee to the high country of Utah along the Continental Divide. His guide is David Love, "the grand old man of Rocky Mountain geology." Helping McPhee see the physical changes that have shaped this region over millions of years, Love also traces his own family's history in this oil-rich, windswept land. As McPhee climbs into the granite landscape of the Rockies, Rising From the Plains creates a fascinating picture of the interdependence of geology, commerce and culture. Nelson Runger's clear narration further enhances McPhee's engaging text.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 11, 2008
    ISBN9781440798856
    Rising from the Plains
    Author

    John McPhee

    John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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    Reviews for Rising from the Plains

    4/5

    104 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      interesting read while on vacation in WY - Thermopolis, Yellowstone, Jackson, and Pinedale.
    • 4/5
      If you can make a sprightly narrative out of the geologic history of Wyoming, you've accomplished something. And he has. Using his cross-state conversation with an esteemed - and native son - geologist as framework, we hear not only a fascinating lecture on uplift and movement, but a bit of turn-of-20th-century history of a sparse frontier. That history is of the geologist's own pioneering family, giving more intimacy to the book.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book, it was about the Rocky Mountains, Wyoming, geology, and one of the great Rocky Mountain geologist ever named David Love. The author took us through a journey about David Love's life and then the author took us on a journey with David Love where he describes some of the geology and events that went on in Wyoming in the past 2.5 billion years. This book is recommended for those scientifically or geologically inclined. The author is very limited on describing the geologic terms he uses in the book so if you are not a geologist, have a geologic dictionary close by. Two thumbs up.
    • 4/5
      I read this as we travelled up from Scottsdale through Flagstaff, by the Grand Canyon (we did stop to gawk), through Monument Valley and the Valley of the Gods, over the pass at Butte as it snowed (roads to Yellowstone were closed because of snow), and I finished it today as we drove around the edges of the Black Hills (Theodore Roosevelt National Park). A perfect read for a rather glorious car trip.
    • 4/5
      Love remarked that day at the cabin: "My great uncle John Muir founded the Sierra Club, and here I am, being a traitor". .. "A scientist, as a scientist does not determine what should be the public policy in terms of exploration for oil and gas."...Love remarked that oil shale "had been trumpeted to the skies" but, with the energy crisis in perigee, both government and industry were losing interest and pulling out. Temporarily pulling out. Sooner or later, people were going to want that shale. ... Just an amazing piece of writing from start to end, I set the 3 issues of the New Yorker aside in 1986 and only got to read it in 2016! This is from the days when the New Yorker still published articles of respectable length. The article reads well alongside Andrea Wulf's fine 2015 biography of Alexander von Humboldt.
    • 4/5
      A book about geologist David Love, a nephew of John Muir, so in that sense a tie to the Disciples of Christ, but that is not mentioned. Wyoming history is revealed in part, especially in and around Lander.A nice little book that would be enhanced if it had an index.
    • 4/5
      Good but not wonderful. A little too scattered, in both time and space. As before, I found the geology interesting and the minutia of people's lives less so - and here large chunks of the book were about geology as seen by one particular man, and why and how he saw the stuff was elaborately explained by going back a generation and describing his parents, how they met, courted, married and raised their kids. The whole book was a compilation of flashbacks - to a generation before, to years before, and to other times within the author's visit with the geologist. He kept saying that the geologist, David Love, had made some comment; then when the basic structure of the book, their trip through Wyoming, got to the point where Love had made that comment McPhee would mention it again. It got quite annoying. It was worse in the earlier generation flashbacks - they weren't presented in chronological order, and at one point I spent most of a scene trying to figure out who "the baby" was (turned out to be Love's older brother - their only child at that point - but I'd just been reading about the two boys at five and seven (or so)). I barely noticed the events in the scene for my confusion. The geology suffered from this a bit too - a long bit discussing how plate tectonics don't explain some features, followed by an explanation of what plate tectonics are, for instance. Overall, interesting but could have used some editing for clarity. And there are several points where I'm pretty sure that things presented in the book (written in 1986) as confusing or anomalous have been solved, which makes me want to find some more current info. Despite my complaints, I'm glad I read it and will probably reread. Reasonably enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      A book about the geology of Wyoming. Sound boring? Well, it isn't. This happens to be one of the most interesting and well written books I've read. HIghly recommended.