John McPhee's "Coming into the Country" - A Journey Through America's Wild Places

Brian S.: John McPhee's Coming into the Country is a stunningly marvelous book about Alaska, its people, and its wilderness. The book is well written and very readable.

The book was written in 1977, and I presume Alaska was more of a frontier than it is today. However, the descriptions of the wilderness--and the people who live there--are breathtaking. I felt like I was there.

McPhee's Annals of the Former World won the Pulitzer Prize. Coming into the Country is almost as good.

United States on Jun 16, 2023

Michael H. Grandin: I love creative nonfiction and McPhee is a master of the genre.

United States on May 10, 2023

Nina A. Schwartz: The title of this book might be Everybody In Alaska Is Crazy. With its vastness, wildlife, natural beauty, killing winters, and indigenous tribes, Alaska attracts a lot of eccentrics: survivalists, religious nuts, modern-day trappers, gold miners, and would-be frontiersmen fed up with life in the lower 48. Starting with the search for a new state capital, and ending with a minute look at one remote town, the author tries to explain Alaska's unique personality and how it got that way. Memorable quote "The 55 gallon (oil) drum is so common across Alaska's landscape that it's earned... informal status as Alaska's State Flower."

United States on Aug 31, 2021

Arthur Digbee: John McPhee tells his story of Alaska in three parts – and, to my mind, it’s the third part that matters. The second we could really do without.

The book begins with McPhee’s travels with federal land managers surveying options for national parks, national wildlife refuges, and other federal lands as part of the great land settlements of the 1970s. As a man from New Jersey who is comfortable with the outdoors, here McPhee learns to see Alaska as a recreationist, in the company of scientists and recreation specialists taking the measure of the land. It’s a reasonable introduction, but I’m not sure it’s an essential one.

The second part recounts the political battle over moving the capital from Juneau. That must have seen important in 1976, but we now know that nothing came of it. Even in 1976, it’s not clear how it would have fit with the first or third part. It’s an interesting story, full of the kinds of characters that populate McPhee’s journalism, but it seems expendable in the book as a whole.

The third part is the meat of the book, the stories of people living in the upper Yukon. Most live on the tributaries of the Yukon from Eagle and...

United States on Nov 09, 2019

Green Stone: This is the kind of book I love most: one that carries you into the wilderness, makes you feel like you're really there, up in wild Alaska, as McPhee goes into depth describing the land, the people, the way of life in rural Alaska, with eloquence and lovely evoked imagery and phrases that allow you to almost feel you're there smelling the fragrance of the forest.

I like reading about this rural, outback way of life that I would be unsuited for in so many ways...I feel like I get a chance to live that life to some extent through reading about it in detail.

I didn't care for the chapter "What they were hunting for", which I thought did not fit in with the rest of the book. I loved reading about the day to day lives of the settlers, trappers and miners.

By the end of the book, though, as much as I admired their ability to live in such wild lands, I also found I was depressed by the settlers' reliance on mining and trapping, extractive methods of living on the land. I would not have difficulty with small-scale mining and trapping operations, but I was disturbed by the description of mining in wild Alaska using large Caterpillar machinery, in fact the largest...

United States on Aug 25, 2019

Gareth W: This book was recommended to me by a colleague when he heard that I was looking at making a television programme in Alaska. He told me that it would give me a valuable insight into the country and the people that live there & WOW, was he right!

It's ever so readable, although infuriating in places as John McPhee paints a brilliant picture of the characters that he meets in the narrative, begins wonderful tales around their lives and then, on occasion, veers off on another fascinating strand leaving you wanting to find out more about those that have just left.

That said though, I really would recommend this book whether you are visiting Alaska in person, from your armchair, or planning on Coming Into the Country yourself. I for one will be looking out for more of his books.

United Kingdom on Sep 04, 2016

Kerry McGee: Liked the mix of characters, the honesty of the writing, my mate in our South Island would enjoy it to. I like the factual nature of the story too.

Australia on May 13, 2016