Irons in the Fire (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: John McPhee
- First Published: 1997
- Type of Work: Essays
- Genres: Nonfiction, Essays
- Subjects: Cattle, Detectives, Forests or forestry, Southwest, Computers, Geology or geologists, Tools, Rocks
At first glance, this book appears to be a gathering of heterogeneous essays related only by their having come by some quirk from the same hand and all appearing first in The New Yorker. Nevertheless, as one reads through them, their unity emerges, signaled by the title. These essays all concern human beings as tool makers and users, possessing diverse tools whose uses are not always benign. As a species, humans have many “irons in the fire,” whether the literal branding irons indicated in the title essay, the talking computer of a prolific scholar blinded at age five by an...
[The entire page is 2132 words long]
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