The Founding Fish (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: John McPhee
- First Published: 2002
- Type of Work: Essays, natural history, and science
- Time of Work: 2001
- Setting: The Delaware, Pamunkey, Connecticut, St. Johns, Hudson, Potomac, Schuylkill, Shubenacadie, and other eastern “shad” rivers, and the Bay of Fundy
- Principal Characters: Boyd Kynard, Armand Charest, Ed Cervone, Buddy Grucela, Gerald Hartzel, Richard St. Pierre, Seth Green, Willy Bemis, Mike Dadswell
- Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, History, Nature writing, Science and technology
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Twentieth century, Nature, Science or scientists, Twenty-first century, Human race, Philadelphia, Rivers or waterways, Oral history, Ecology, Environment or environmental health, Life, biological, Endangered species, Fishing or fishermen, Pollution, Dams or reservoirs, Fishes, Wildlife, Biology or biologists, 2000’s, Marine biology, Marine animals
- Locales: East Coast (U.S.)
In his twenty-sixth book, John McPhee profiles a species of fish, the American shad–Alosa sapidissima—and dozens of men and women who fish for shad, biologists and ichthyologists who study shad, environmentalists who seek to preserve shad habitat, and others including several of McPhee’s own ancestors. This book, like his famous “geological” text, Annals of the Former World (1998), provides in equal mixture the anecdotal and the technical, the scientific and the affective, a technique that in McPhee’s hand ensures lively and informative, if at times...
[The entire page is 1741 words long]
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