Tabula Rasa

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.

Praise for Tabula Rasa

"It's not faint praise to say [McPhee] is still more pleasingly consistent than any other writer working. There is never a dud metaphor, never a cliché . . . McPhee collapses the distance between man and métier as he rarely has before." -Mark Oppenheimer, The Washington Post

"It is telling that McPhee's random exercise in notebook-emptying proves a more pleasant read than most writers' fully formed projects . . . In writing Tabula Rasa, McPhee, a legend of what is now often called creative nonfiction, found a replenishment of another quality that can lead to a long life: fun." -Chris Vognar, Los Angeles Times

"McPhee is uncommonly perceptive about his own orientations and process . . . Tabula Rasa both demystifies what it means to write about the world and deepens one's pleasure as to the many mysteries inherent to writing." -John Warner, Chicago Tribune

"[McPhee's] talent at turning any subject that interests him into writing that is fresh and compelling is unmatched. He is always a deep pleasure to read . . . [Tabula Rasa] is as close to an autobiography as we will get." -Jim Kelly, Air Mail

"An insightful book by a master of literary nonfiction . . . As he explores what might have been, Mr. McPhee also proves how enjoyable it can be to spend time with such an expert storyteller." -The Economist

"What do you do when your writing career lasts seven decades but you haven't said everything you once thought about saying? If you're John McPhee, you crack open your notebooks and give fans a taste of the stories you never wrote . . . Tabula Rasa demonstrates just how broad McPhee's 'tabula' has always been. He's like an NBA star who always has the green light to shoot." -Rob Merrill, Associated Press

"The cogency, potency, and temperance of [McPhee's] voice never waver . . . A gem from an exemplar of narrative nonfiction." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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