Richard Thompson's Reviews > Tabula Rasa: Volume 1

I read one earlier book by John McPhee about the geology of California. It was quite good, but I had forgotten that he wrote it until he references it a third of the way into this book. This book is mostly a career retrospective by an older writer. Mr. McPhee is currently 92. I enjoyed his memories of how he built his career as a writer, his many years at Princeton and his dealings with his students. Most of all I enjoyed his discussion of the projects that he started but never finished writing. But I think that the whole thing would have been much more meaningful to me if I had been better acquainted with his work. This would be a lot of fun for anybody who is a McPhee fan. For the rest of us who don't know him or only know him a little, it is good enough, but it would have been better for me to have read a couple more of his other books first.