The Control of Nature

8vo - over 7æ" - 9æ" tall. Hard cover with cloth-covered boards and spine, gold printing on spine, black printed image on front cover, is in FINE condition. When John McPhee was working on his previous book, "Rising from the Plains," he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive On -- the Control of Nature is Won, Not Given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase -- "the control of nature" -- seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces -- heroic or venal, rash or well advised -- when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the Gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya -- the largest river swamp in North America -- and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control.