Uncommon Carriers
John McPhee

McPhee is back on track with this collection of essays about transportation (already published in magazines). Trucking, ship training simulators, river barging, UPS's distribution network, and Wyoming coal trains are the subject of most of them. The odd man out is an account of McPhee's paddle up today's Merrimack, in the wake of Henry David Thoreau's 1839 journey, which resulted in one of Americaís earliest industrio-pastoral travelogues, and Thoreau's first book. Any similarity we are led to draw between McPhee and Thoreau is purely by accident, I'm sure.

Farrar Straus and Giroux, paperback, 248 pages, 2006.