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Oranges

Amazon.com Price:  $11.95 (as of 01/05/2019 15:24 PST- Details)

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Description

A classic of reportage, Oranges used to be first conceived as a short magazine article about oranges and orange juice, but the writer kept encountering such a lot impossible to resist information that he eventually found that he had in reality written a book. It contains sketches of orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers, orange packers, early settlers on Florida’s Indian River, the first orange barons, modern concentrate makers, and a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida who could also be the last of the individual orange barons. McPhee’s astonishing book has an almost narrative progression, is immensely readable, and is often amusing. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles, because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too―with elements in it that range from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a custom of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in every hand.

Whilst many readers are familiar with John McPhee’s masterful pieces on a large scale (the geological history of North The us, or the nature of Alaska), McPhee is equally remarkable when he considers the seemingly inconsequential. Oranges used to be conceived as a short magazine piece, but thanks to his unparalleled investigative skills, became a slim, fact-filled book. As McPhee chronicles orange farmers struggling with frost and horticulturists’ new breeds of citrus, oranges come to seem a microcosm of man’s relationship with nature.

Like Flemish miniaturists who reveal the essence of humankind within the confines of a tiny frame, McPhee once again demonstrates that the smallest topic is replete with history, significance, and consequence.

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