Product Details
Pine Barrens

Pine Barrens
By J Mcphee

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Product Description

Most people think of New Jersey as a suburban-industrial corridor that runs between New York and Philadelphia. Yet in the low center of the state is a near wilderness, larger than most national parks, which has been known since the seventeenth century as the Pine Barrens.

The term refers to the predominant trees in the vast forests that cover the area and to the quality of the soils below, which are too sandy and acid to be good for farming. On all sides, however, developments of one kind or another have gradually moved in, so that now the central and integral forest is reduced to about a thousand square miles. Although New Jersey has the heaviest population density of any state, huge segments of the Pine Barrens remain uninhabited. The few people who dwell in the region, the “Pineys,” are little known and often misunderstood. Here McPhee uses his uncanny skills as a journalist to explore the history of the region and describe the people—and their distinctive folklore—who call it home.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #1308179 in Books
  • Published on: 1990-06-01
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 157 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Amazon.com
Contrary to popular opinion, the whole of New Jersey is not a continuous Superfund site enlivened solely by poorly labeled Turnpike exits and skanky diners. In fact, the largest essentially untouched wilderness east of the Mississippi comprises nearly half the state: the New Jersey Pine Barrens. This more than 1,000-square-mile region has only a few thousand inhabitants--the Pineys, whose way of life has remained essentially unchanged since the 17th century. McPhee--one of the finest American essayists of the 20th century--has written an extraordinarily compelling, informative, and insightful book about the botanical, cultural, hydrological, and historical peculiarities of this region. He also details the efforts to save it from the creeping urbanization of nearby Philadelphia and New York City. Very Highly Recommended.

Review

"An outstanding reading experience." --Natural History

About the Author

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. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1969), The Crofter and the Laird (1969), Levels of the Game (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1972), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), The Curve of Binding Energy (1974), Pieces of the Frame (collection, 1975), and The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975). Both Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating topic; elegant, yet sparse prose.5
Ecological, both natural and social, books abound these days, but that wasn't the case back in 1967 when this book was first published. Hopefully in the intervening years, McPhee's elegant but spare prose has helped remove or at least, temper the damage done early in the Twentieth Century to the reputation of the Pine Barrens and its denizens by well-meaning, if arrogant, social scientists. The Barrens is truly a glorious piece of nature and those who dwell there have their own unique charm and grace. McPhee, a consummate raconteur, reveals both with intelligence and a warm empathy. It's still hard to believe that the Barrens exist, mere miles from the rambunctious urbanity of Philadelphia and New York City, but McPhee's book, still vital and relevant after all these years, truly makes you want to visit and maybe even stay.

A snapshot of nature, now passing5
While John McPhee's best known bit of nature writing is his tribute to Alaska, "Coming into the Country", before it he wrote "The Pine Barrens". The Pine Barrens were a chunk of New Jersey (!) that was mostly unspoiled sandy woodlands in 1968. Filled with colorful folks, and even more colorful tradition, the Barrens were a retreat for those who knew to escape to them from the cities that surrounded it. Now, alas, development has slunk deep into the Barrens, were there was once dirt roads and craftsmen still making bark canoes, now there are commuter suburbs with cutesy names like "Piney Haven". Please don't think that the book isn't worth your time, just because most of what it describes has passed. The genius of McPhee is that his prose is so wonderfull and timeless, that the people and places of the Pine Barrens still live in the book. Read it, and resolve to maintain the little slice of nature near you that is still there. Don't know where it might be? This book will inspire you to find it, around the corner and back behind something. When you find it, you'll know it, and you'll want to help it survive.

before you judge New Jersey...5
In the Introduction to the Second John McPhee Reader, David Remnick (now McPhee's editor at The New Yorker) notes that many people find McPhee's subjects too obscure & are put off by his decision to remain "distant from politics, preferring to make something of very little." I don't doubt that this is true, but I feel sorry for people who miss out on reading his terrific work because they feel that way. Over nearly 40 years of writing non-fiction essays for The New Yorker, McPhee has crafted a body of great literature by immersing himself in a variety of American subcultures and explicating them for the general public. In Pine Barrens, by discussing everything from growing cranberries to the natural history of fires to the legend of the Jersey Devil and introducing us to a cast of fascinating characters along the way, McPhee accomplishes what only the best writers can, he brings alive an entire world that might otherwise have remained unknown to us. Those of you who think that New Jersey consists of only highways and chemical plants, should find the book especially interesting.

GRADE: A