Second John McPhee Reader, The (Part 2)

For a person who has not encountered John McPhee's lively writing, The Second John McPhee Reader is the perfect introduction. McPhee, author of Coming Into the Country, punctuates his delightful prose with a sharp sense of humor, and a fascination with things most of us never bother to notice.

Whether he's profiling a northern Maine game warden named John McPhee in Table of Contents, or tracking down a fortune in "unofficial" art from the Soviet Union's Khrushchev-Brezhnev era in The Ransom...