#77 in History books
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Reddit mentions of The Control of Nature
Sentiment score: 8
Reddit mentions: 12
We found 12 Reddit mentions of The Control of Nature. Here are the top ones.
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Specs:
Height | 8.2098261 Inches |
Length | 5.62 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | September 1990 |
Weight | 0.73 Pounds |
Width | 0.7850378 Inches |
One of the main things to do in Baton Rouge is to eat delicious food.
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I would prefer the relevant New Yorker article by John McPhee. You can still buy the book.
I'm not home yet but I did some googling and found it - it's called "The Control of Nature" by John McPhee. It's a little dated now I suppose but the stories are still interesting and applicable.
Being a person who has taught many university geology courses, I would say that in general geology textbooks are really boring (in my opinion). I think there are some good non-fiction books our there about geology that may be more interesting. Some suggestions:
In the interest of trying to recommend books you may not have read, I am suggesting some that may seem far afield from books like HPMOR. But I have read each of them multiple times and loved them, and all of them gave me a lot to think about.
I just created a comment for Chapter 85 recommending Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. It is non-fiction, a painfully honest autobiography, and not very similar except for the bits about Knut Haukelid, but it is an amazing book. The author was the head of codes for SOE during WWII and so the book is about cryptography and secrets. And courage. I'm reading it for the third time right now.
Tuf Voyaging is a collection of short stories by George R. R. Martin (no one named Stark is in it), about Haviland Tuf, a misanthropic cat-loving merchant who starts with his humble ship "Cornucopia of Excellent Goods at Low Prices" and ends up with terrifying power and some hard decisions to make about how to use it. I'd call it comedy because it is hilarious, but it is also brilliantly-written horror.
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is a tiny surreal book by Stanislaw Lem, about a journal uncovered by a post-apolcalyptic civilization. The main character has no name, and is apparently a spy on a mission so secret even he doesn't know about it. It is nightmarish, has absolutely no rationality to it at all, is clever and unlike any other book I've read, and most people haven't heard of it.
The Control of Nature by John McPhee is another non-fiction book. I recommend it for the beauty of the language, the depth of the research, and the fact that it is incredibly fascinating and impossible to put down. McPhee makes every person he meets into someone you want to know, and his science has substance without ever losing that sense of wonder.
[The Control of Nature by John McPhee] (https://www.amazon.com/Control-Nature-John-McPhee/dp/0374522596?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc). Read it in Intro to Geology class. We had to write a paper about which location we'd rather live in and why. I chose Iceland. Read it and see if you can figure out why!
John McPhee wrote on this in his book 'Control of Nature' - the story of the lower Mississippi takes up about a third of the book with southern California mudslide control another third, and the last a story about protecting an Icelandic town from a lava flow -
A fascinating read...
Rats, Lice and History - Hans Zinsser
The Discovers - Daniel Boorstein
Connections - James Burke
The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould
Control of Nature - John McPhee
Control of Nature by John McPhee has a great chapter on that project specifically as well as all of the levees and other river control schemes that take place on the Mississippi. It is a fascinating read.
Thanks! I just wish I could say there were more good things on the list.
And thanks for the Patton recommendation, I'll check that out.
I do recommend anything by John McPhee in the strongest possible terms. It's all non-fiction, and always interesting and often very funny, and about a tremendous range of topics.
Like fishing? Read The Founding Fish, which is all about the American Shad, and I mentioned before.
Like boats? Looking For a Ship is about the merchant marine.
Planes, trains, and automobiles (and more boats)? Uncommon Carriers deals with all of them, and why almost all lobster eaten in the US comes from Kentucky.
Care for tales about why New Orleans is doomed, pissing on lava , and debris flows in LA? The Control of Nature covers those.
Fruit? How about Oranges?
Geology? The Annals of the Former World is a compilation of several shorter books more or less following I-80 across the US.
Sports? Tennis (and basketball to a lesser extent). He's also written about lacrosse in various magazines.
...And a ton of other stuff, ranging from bears to farmers markets to nuclear energy to lifting body airplanes to Switzerland.
Read something by John McPhee. I would highly recommend The Control Of Nature, especially if you have any interest in civil engineering.