The Control of Nature

By John McPhee

Book Overview

While 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.

In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is.

In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers.

Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris.

Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374128901
• ISBN13: 9780374128906
• Release Date: August 1989
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Great book

Well written, interesting read.

Man vs. Nature: Mother Nature has more time than we do!

"Whenever you try to control nature, you've got one strike against you." pg. 13This book tells 3 informative true stories of man's attempts to control nature. The Mississippi River, a massive lava flow in Iceland, and the incredibly powerful debris flows of the San Gabriel Mountains. The first story describes in vivid detail attempts to control the Mississippi River from taking a new course... Atchafalaya. If the river takes this new route, say goodbye to New Orleans, B.F. Goodrich, E.I. du Pont, Uniroyal, Monsanto, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Shell and Union Carbide just to name a few. Four major floods in 10 years and 32 disastrous crevasses in a single spring weren't enough to suggest to the Army Corps of Engineers that levees alone might never be able to handle the job of controlling the river!The second true story involves Heimay, a volcano that dumped enough lava in 1973 alone that would have been enough to envelop New York's entire financial district, with only the tops of the World Trade Center towers sticking out like ski huts! Will pumping 11,500,000 gallons of sea water a day on the flow be enough to save the harbor from being closed off? Find out! Also find out what I mean when I say McPhee decided to "pissa a hraunid"! :) The ending to this story will surprise you in more way than one!The last story involves the mighty San Gabriel Mountains, with average slopes of 65-70% grade, climbing faster than almost any mountain chain in the world, and dumping 7 tons of regolith each year, that threaten Angelinos (L.A.)! Drought, fire, and flood; The real seasons in Los Angeles, and instead of the occasional storm, we get the occasional Earthquake! Will more than 2,000 miles of underground conduits, concrete-lined open stream channels, and an army of debris basins be enough to stop the beast? If it does it does it at the expense of the beaches! If it doesn't?... It does it at the expense of the beaches anyway! Find out why in this great book!You'll learn of lot of interesting facts while at the same time get a great story of the battle of all battles! Man against nature!Only problems with the book: There is no such animal as a mudslide. Mud flows! And Earth is not spelled with a lower case and it isn't "the Earth", its just Earth. You don't say "the Mars" or "the Jupiter", so why say "the Earth"?! My worthless pet peeves... :)

McPhee: Nobody does it better

At the start, I must confess that I am a John McPhee fan, commencing with "Coming into the Country" and proceeding through books on oranges, birchbark canoe making, atomic bombs as propulsion devices, etc. His books on America's geology are excellent. Even so, I like this one best. McPhee has the apparently inexhaustible ability to take sometimes dry textbook subjects and give them a human touch, much in the manner of the late George R. Stewart. This was especially borne out in McPhee's discussion of what is probably a vain attempt, in the long run, to control the lower Mississippi River. After reading this book, I happened to travel to Natchez, Mississippi, and went on down to see the Old River Flood Control Structure. Having read McPhee aided me considerably in understanding this herculean endeavor. McPhee demonstrated a similar excellence in writing about the landslide problem in Los Angeles. True enough, McPhee's book includes few graphs, charts, or photos. However the excellence of his descriptive prose obviates any claim that the informative nature of the text is somehow meaningfully diminished. Buy it. Read it. Keep it. You'll be glad you did.

An Engineering Thriller? You Bet!

The Control of Nature is a collection of three long esssays about people trying to engineer their way around forces of nature. The first one about control of the Mississippi river to keep it in the current streambed, the second about anticipating volcanic activity in Iceland and the last one dealing with the literal moving of mountains as Los Angeles population pressure pushes people to bulid in the San Gaberial Mountains of California.McPhee, as always, tries to stay in the background and let the participants speak on the page, but there is no mistaking his memorably vivid descriptions of people or nature. His prose are first rate with an eye for compelling detail.The book itself is a quick, thrilling read that leaves the reader with a better understanding of unsung heroes and follies.My favorite McPhee. A warning about some of McPhee's other books: My eyes seem to always glaze over when I attempt one of his "rock talk" full length books on geology.

My first John McPhee...and definitely won't be the last

When I learned that John McPhee won a Pulitzer Prize for ANNALS OF THE FORMER WORLD, I blanched a bit at buying and reading that weighty tome. I wasn't sure about tackling it, no matter how highly recommended. Thus, I looked for a smaller volume of his to "test the waters" since I have never read anything written by him before.I chose, almost at random, this volume, and fell in love with the man's work. McPhee definitely has a talent for writing, both in describing the often unusual people he meets in the three locales depicted, and his intelligent and witty turns of phrase.This definitely won't be my last John McPhee book.

An unexpected learning experience

Having completed my Master's thesis on a 300 year flood, I picked up this book to read about Old River and the Corps' struggle to hold its position. However, I found myself even more fascinated with the struggle of the Icelandic people against essentially the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (good luck) and the head-in-the-sand mentality of Southern Californians when it comes to mudslides. McPhee is as artful in explaining geology as geology is complex. When I read his descriptions of complex geological situations put into simple terms, I smile, chuckle, shake my head, and read the line over and over. I just can't believe such complex concepts can be explained so simply using the same language I use everyday.The man is good.