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Silk Parachute
- Narrated by: John McPhee
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
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Publisher's summary
A wondrous book of McPhee's prose pieces - in many aspects his most personal in four decades
The brief, brilliant essay "Silk Parachute", which first appeared in The New Yorker over a decade ago, has become John McPhee's most anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces here - highly varied in length and theme - McPhee ranges with his characteristic humor and intensity through lacrosse, long-exposure view-camera photography, the weird foods he has sometimes been served in the course of his reportorial travels, a US Open golf championship, and a season in Europe "on the chalk" from the downs and sea cliffs of England to the Maas valley in the Netherlands and the champagne country of northern France.
Some of the pieces are wholly personal. In luminous recollections of his early years, for example, he goes on outings with his mother, deliberately overturns canoes in a learning process at a summer camp, and germinates a future book while riding on a jump seat to away games as a basketball player. But each piece - on whatever theme - contains somewhere a personal aspect in which McPhee suggests why he was attracted to write about the subject, and each opens like a silk parachute, lofted skyward and suddenly blossoming with color and form.
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Alone and un-tethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
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Get Your Post-Colonial Gatsby ON!
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-12
By: Joseph O'Neill
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Turn Right at Machu Picchu
- Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
- By: Mark Adams
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Writer for the New York Times and GQ, Mark Adams is also the acclaimed author of Mr. America. In this fascinating travelogue, Adams follows in the controversial footsteps of Hiram Bingham III, who’s been both lionized and vilified for his discovery of the famed Lost City in 1911—but which reputation is justified?
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Spellbounding, exceptional vocals
- By KLewis on 09-19-15
By: Mark Adams
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Essays of E. B. White
- By: E. B. White
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Legendary author and essayist E. B. White writes, "The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest." Covering a large number of subjects, this classic collection features 31 of White's most memorable essays.
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E.B. White writes honestly, fearlessly and clearly
- By Bonny on 09-03-17
By: E. B. White
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The Longest Road
- Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
- By: Philip Caputo
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Philip Caputo, who had just turned 70, his wife, and their two English setters took off in a truck hauling an Airstream camper from Key West, Florida, en route via back roads and state routes to Deadhorse, Alaska. The journey took four months and covered 17,000 miles, during which Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are really about in the 21st century.
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Very Disappointing
- By Amazon Customer on 03-25-18
By: Philip Caputo
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Lassoing the Sun
- A Year in America's National Parks
- By: Mark Woods
- Narrated by: Corey M. Snow
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Many childhood summers, Mark Woods piled into a station wagon with his parents and two sisters and headed to America's national parks. Mark's most vivid childhood memories are set against a backdrop of mountains, woods, and fireflies in places like Redwood, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon national parks. On the eve of turning 50, and a little burned out, Mark decided to reconnect with the great outdoors. He'd spend a year visiting the national parks.
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great narrator, lackluster story, wonderful themes
- By MT on 08-21-18
By: Mark Woods
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Strange Stones
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.
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funny, entertaining
- By Katherine on 08-02-13
By: Peter Hessler
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Twelve Mighty Orphans
- The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football
- By: Jim Dent
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites - a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least 30 pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing - not even a football - yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.
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Great story!!
- By Damian McKeon on 06-14-21
By: Jim Dent
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Tommy's Honor
- The Story of Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris, Golf's Founding Father and Son
- By: Kevin Cook
- Narrated by: James A. Gillies
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Bringing to life golf's founding father and son, Tommy's Honor is a stirring tribute to two legendary players and a vivid evocation of their colorful, rip-roaring times. Tommy's Honor is both fascinating history and a moving personal saga. But this audiobook isn't only for golfers. It's for every son who has fought to escape a father's shadow and for every father who has guided a son toward manhood, then found it hard to let him go.
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An interesting sports history lesson
- By Hebern on 06-10-19
By: Kevin Cook
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Full Circle
- A Pacific Journey with Michael Palin
- By: Michael Palin
- Narrated by: Michael Palin
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
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Following the hugely popular and successful Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, Michael Palin set off to meet another challenge: an anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the world's largest ocean, the Pacific.
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Excellent, per usual
- By Enroute8 on 06-03-07
By: Michael Palin
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Read and released.
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To geologists, rocks are beautiful, roadcuts are windowpanes, and the earth is alive, a work in progress. The cataclysmic movement that gives birth to mountains and oceans is ongoing and can still be seen at certain places on our planet. One of these is the Basin and Range region centered in Nevada and Utah.
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Wow.
- By Julie on 10-12-04
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The Patch is the seventh collection of essays by the nonfiction master John McPhee. It is divided into two parts. It is an "album quilt", an artful assortment of nonfiction writings that have not previously appeared in any book.
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Welcome to Alaska
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Not what I expected
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This account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968 begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games.
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McPhee's early work is brilliant.
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Draft No. 4 is an elucidation of the writer's craft by a master practitioner. In a series of playful but expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he's gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writers of several generations. McPhee offers a definitive guide to the crucial decisions regarding structure, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces and presents extracts from some of his best-loved work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny.
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Home
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Encounters with the Archdruid
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The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses—on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.
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McPhee at the absolute height of his powers
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By: John McPhee
What listeners say about Silk Parachute
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tom Craven
- 06-11-24
Lovely collection of well-read essays
Some are timeless, some more of their place and time, but all worth the listen.
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- John P Jennings
- 03-01-24
A Master Of Words
Deeply researched, profoundly interesting (even on topics you think you would have no interest in) and written with poetic precision. As always John McPhee takes me places I never thought I would be.
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- Sid with Cats
- 05-17-22
Don't miss this McPhee either
Highly crafted writing on various non-fictional topics; compiled as selections more personal to the author and intimately read by McPhee himself.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Inez
- 07-15-23
STORIES FOR EVERYONE
I LOVE EVERYTHING JOHN MCPHEE WRITES. WHATEVER SUBJECT HE TACKLES, I KNOW IT IS GOING TO BE A WINNER.
WHEN I FINISH EVERY BOOK I WILL BE ABLE TO SAY EDUCATED BY JOHN McPHEE. ADD THIS EDUCATION TO
BILL BRYSON, PAUL THEROUX. AND JOHN MUIR,
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- Darwin8u
- 11-23-18
It's a landscape with the aspect of memory."
"It's a landscape with the aspect of memory."
- Laura McPhee or Virginia Beahan talking about the landscape around Trenton, NJ (I'm not sure who is being quoted, it might be a slight narrative allusion to the title and subject of this essay, and McPhee is playing with the reader a bit) in Under the Cloth by John McPhee
I bought this book almost 8 years ago. I'm not sure why I didn't read it in 2010. It was shelved next to the remaining 8-9 McPhee books I haven't read and not forgotten, just posponed. Well, I jumped back into reading McPhee again (I can't sip McPhee, he is best consumed in large quantities until exhausted). I was sent a copy of his most recent book of essays: The Patch. And it got me rolling again. I want to finish, catch-up, complete McPhee before he is 90 (March 8, 2021). So I need to get to work again.
The book consists of several (six?) essays that appeared in the New Yorker (no surprise to ANYONE the least bit familiar with either the New Yorker or McPhee). It also begins and ends with short essays and also includes a couple essays not found outside this book (that I can find):
1. "Silk Parachute" - A short, beautiful introductory essay about his mother and childhood.
2. "Season on the Chalk" - New Yorker 3/12/2007
3. "Swimming with Canoes" - New Yorker 8/10/1998
4. "Warming the Jump Seat" - A short essay about writing about Mr. Boyden, headmaster of Deerfield Academy, profiled in two articles in the New Yorker in 1966, and eventually, put into a book published by FSG titled: The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden of Deerfield
5. "Spin Right and Shoot Left" - New Yorker - 3/23/2009
6. "Under the Cloth - An essay about the dual photography of McPhee's daughter Laura (I just ordered a couple of her books on Amazon) and Virginia Beahan (I ordered their book too). I was happy to see that Ariel Katz, in her wonderful essay "Photography and Language in John McPhee's "Under the Cloth" came away with the same impression I did earlier and above in my lead quote by Laura or Virginia:
The way McPhee structures his essay mirrors his subject matter: much of the dialogue in the essay isn’t attributed to either photographer, giving their words the effect of having emerged, at times, as a chorus from inside the camera with which they work. Although they’re making visual art, language, as McPhee observes, is key to their collaboration. He writes, 'Neither one is hesitant with words. In the span of their work together, words by the tens of thousands, in every conceivable category, have been muffled by the dark cloth.
7. "My Life List" - New Yorker 9/3/2007
8. "Checkpoints - New Yorker 2/9/2009
9. "Rip Van Golfer" - New Yorker 8/6/2007
10. Nowheres - A touching and brief concluding essay on the beauty of New Jersy, McPhee's home.
Anyway, you can read 6/10 of essays and probably 8/10 of the text directly from the New Yorker if you don't run out of free views (I did just checking for this essay) or you can subscribe (I will next year) or you can just buy the damn book from FSG. It really was a delight on a day of delights (Thanksgiving). I am grateful, every year, for John McPhee.
PS. The ONLY REASON I'm giving the audible performance one star is NOT because of McPhee. It is because the audible version between chapters 11 and 12, cuts off about 4 of the final pages of "Checkpoints"
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- Michael L. Seeger
- 05-04-21
Not the McPhee I enjoy
Parts of this book I found so tedious that I fast forwarded to the next chapter. The part on Lacrosse
with endless lists of teams and other minutia was a chore to get through. At odd intervals the author
drifts into seemingly unrelated material without
any cohesive structure.
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- Betsy Fowler
- 07-28-24
John McPhee can write about anything
These short pieces cover many topics, such as the chalk region of England and France, a golf tournament, large-format photography, and much more. All are worth hearing.
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- Aud reader.
- 03-14-19
all over the place
I usually love John McPhee, but I didn't "get" this one. it was all over the place, with no thread - not even a parachute cord - running through it. He is not the most pleasant speaker I've ever heard, either. This is the only book of his that I didn't love, and I've read most of them.
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2 people found this helpful