The Control of Nature

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Summary: Man vs. Nature: Mother Nature has more time than we do!
Review: "Whenever you try to control nature, you've got one strike against you." pg. 13

This 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... :)

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Summary: McPhee: Nobody does it better
Review: 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.

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Summary: A Great Set of Stories
Review: I just love McPhee's story telling books. This is one my favorite books of his (Looking for a Ship is my #1). It doesn't get too technical like some of his other books about nature. He takes you from LA to Lousiana! This book is well worth reading.

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Summary: Best of McPhee's work
Review: If you've never read McPhee, this is the place to start. And if you have read him but found him either too obscure, too geological, or too obsessed with sesquipedalism at the expense of clarity, you will love this book. It's the best book I've read about the interplay of human and natural environments, giving the lie to the idea that "nature" is something outside of humanity, and vice versa. I say that, he doesn't. He never falls into such didactic, ideological prose. Instead, he provides four beautiful case studies of how and why people interact with challenging environments -- floods, volcanoes, mudslides -- and leaves the reader looking at nature differently.

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Summary: Early McPhee...he's better now, but this ain't bad
Review: In Control of Nature McPhee turns his attention to how modern engineers have dealt with the Mississippi, lava flows and LA area rock slides. The topics are compelling and the treatment is thorough.

The sole (minor) weakness is McPhee's irritating tendency to use a big word where a little one will do just fine, make the obscure allusion, and use occasional similies that distract rather than illustrate. This problem is not seen in his more recent writing, so he either has seen the error of his ways or gotten a strong editor.

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Summary: Another great McPhee
Review: In what are really three long essays, McPhee explores the debris flows of California's San Gabriel Mountains, volcanos in Iceland (and Hawaii), and the controlling of the lower Mississippi. Fascinating as always, rich in both technical detail and the personalities inside the stories, this book was exactly why I like this author. Except for the practically unpronounceable Icelandic names, a fluid and engrossing book all the way through.

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Summary: Interesting premise
Review: My fav essay was about "the" River. Also, now when watching the evening news, the link between fire and flood makes alot of sense. Thanks for the enlightenment.

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Summary: An Engineering Thriller? You Bet!
Review: 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.

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Summary: A humorous look at 3 cases where man attempts to best nature
Review: The Control of Nature is an entertaining glimpse of three different attempts of man to control nature. It is fascinating reading for the lay reader and scientist alike. The first section of the book humorously looks at the Mississippi River and how man forever battles to confine and direct its flow. The second section focuses on Iceland, an area well known for its volcanic activity. John McPhee recreates the events that led to man's decision to try to control the flow of lava. In the final section John McPhee redirects our attention to the crumbling mountains of California. Here John McPhee details the stubbornness and foolishness of man. He defines the daily struggle of the people who want to live in an unstable environment

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Summary: A bit unfocused, but fascinating all the same
Review: The message is the medium of The Control of Nature. In a series of three essays, each regarding a different geographical region, McPhee shows that in the war between man and nature it's a case of the humans on horseback facing a blitzkrieg of geological heavy artillery. What amazes McPhee, and thus what comes across to the reader, is the arrogant hubris of the people who feel that nature can be controlled. One essay is about the Mississippi river, and how it has been channeled by dikes and levees to stay on the course that it has been set on since the early part of this century, although anyone can see that it is in its nature to change course. Essay two is about the lava flows in Iceland, where the engineers used the cooling power of the sea to divert the flow from a township--at least for now. And, last, McPhee covers the shifting mountainsides of southern California--not the mud of the beach homes, but the Santa Gabriel mountains which are so geologically new that the rocks that they consist of are more akin to sand. In each essay, the humans have fought the battle to a draw, but the enemy is worse than any evil fantasy. Nature is unsleeping, its forces are legion, and each battle it suffers no losses. The expense, in both money and lives, of trying to withhold the inevitable seems to doom the humans to lose. But they do not give up.

It's not that I do not like McPhee. On the contrary, I find his subjects fascinating, and his writing vivid. I just expected something more tight and focused.