[Review] The Control of Nature (John McPhee) Summarized.

[Review] The Control of Nature (John McPhee) Summarized.
9natree
[Review] The Control of Nature (John McPhee) Summarized.

May 16 2026 | 00:08:30

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Episode May 16, 2026 00:08:30

Show Notes

The Control of Nature (John McPhee)

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#OldRiverControlStructure #AtchafalayaRiverdiversion #Eldfelllavacooling #SanGabrieldebrisflows #humancontrolofnaturalforces #TheControlofNature

The Control of Nature is John McPhee’s 1989 work of literary nonfiction about human attempts to manage forces that are larger, older, and less predictable than the systems built to contain them. Drawn from three long essays first published in The New Yorker, the book examines the Old River Control Structure in Louisiana, emergency lava diversion during the 1973 Eldfell eruption in Iceland, and debris flows descending from the San Gabriel Mountains into the Los Angeles basin. McPhee does not write a policy manual or a simple environmental warning. Instead, he combines field reporting, geology, hydrology, engineering explanation, and portraits of working specialists to show how control is pursued in practice. The book’s purpose is to make visible the technical ingenuity and philosophical tension behind projects that defend human settlements from rivers, volcanoes, and mountains. Its central interest lies in the uneasy boundary between necessary intervention and the enduring autonomy of natural processes.

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