The Founding Fish

Rating:
Summary: An interesting journey
Review: Joh McPhee creates a masterpiece here writing a book that follows the oldest fishery in the United States. Long before George Washington first cast his seine for American shad, native Americans no doubt enjoyed these tasty fish that obligingly swam up the rivers each spring. McPhee takes us on a journey up and down the East Coast of North America in search of this ancient fish. Along the way we talk to guides, local commercial anglers, noted biologists, and expert historians to learn all about American shad and the impact this species has had on society from the earliest colonial days up until the present. We trace the life history of the shad as life begins in the nursery waters of the great eastern rivers in North America. We follow the young as they head to the ocean at the end of their first summer. We learn about the life of shad in the oceans, and we stand with the anglers, hip-deep in the waters of the shad's natal rivers, as they wait to cast to the mature adults struggling upstream to begin the cycle again.

This is a wonderful book, full of lively stories and interesting information. It combines fisheries science, sociology, history, and angling advice in a broad colorful tapestry that transcends normal "fish books." This is a book that will appeal to people from all walks of life, because it approaches the subject from so many angles. In a way, to know the American shad and its story is to know America. As the founding fathers struggled to hammer out a new country and defend it from strife both within and without, the founding fish- the American shad- and the lucrative fisheries that built up around it were inextricably interwoven with everyday life. Although we came close to destroying these wonderful fish through habitat detsruction, the American shad stands tall today as a wonderful testament to the value of nature and the ability of America to recover an animal that was so vital to the young country. Read this book. I think you will treasure it.

Rating:
Summary: McPhee on top of his game
Review: John McPhee can make _anything_ interesting. Oranges? Yep. Birchbark canoes? You bet. Well, he's done it again with a fascinating look at the American shad. This is no trendy fish, but don't let that fool you. There is more material here than in any two books written about trout or bass.

Perhaps the most captivating aspect of the book is McPhee's ability to interweave history, science, and personal narrative. I was amazed to learn what an important role the shad has played in the history of the United States, and what an equally important role Americans have had in shaping the history of the shad. But most satisfying is what we learn about McPhee himself, both his shad fishing exploits and misadventures. With a dry sense of humor and mastery of understatement, the author kept me chuckling throughout.

I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys history, science, fishing--or who appreciates reading remarkably tight and engaging prose. McPhee is a master writer, and we all stand to learn a great deal from him.

Rating:
Summary: The Remarkable Shad
Review: John McPhee has the ability - which I prize as a reader - to write engagingly about any subject, and Founding Fish is no exception. In this case, the subject is the American Shad. The fish is prized by anglers and gourmands and pops in and out of American history. But this is not "the cultural history of American Shad" (are we tired of these "cultural history of..." books yet?" Instead he weaves history with science as well as plenty of personal observation. The myriad digressions are like seams of precious metal. McPhee's world is populated with fascinating characters - ichthyologists, shad dart makers, and a seine fisherman from the Bay of Fundy. If you have a taste for non-fiction and would like a book that is diverting and pleasurable (rather than "hard-hitting" and topical) try reading John McPhee.

Rating:
Summary: Everything About Shad, And Everything Connected to Shad
Review: John McPhee has written numerous pieces for _The New Yorker_ and over a score of books on such subjects as oranges, canoes, and geology. His wide range of interests now centers on an object of personal obsession; in _The Founding Fish_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) he tells us about his own passion for fishing for shad. As you might expect, he can't help but tell us a lot more, about history, ecology, and human oddities. If you don't know about shad, and even if you don't know about fishing, and don't care to know about it, you won't feel alienated away from these pages, which contain McPhee's fine prose and wry humor. (For instance, he is surprised to find a snake in his net: "I lack the sense of companionship that some people seem to have with snakes.") Shad is worth knowing about, it turns out, and so is McPhee, who has seldom put himself as a character in his own books.

Of course, there is much advice about fishing for shad, which seem to be a particularly elusive fish. McPhee quotes extensively from his fishing diaries, and starts his book with a funny description of an epic battle with a shad on the Delaware River starts. McPhee has seventy feet of six-pound test line "suddenly pulled by a great deal more than the current." The battle goes on for pages and pages, eventually ending in the netting of a 4 3/4 pound shad. A fighting fish, to be sure. Or a clumsy angler. Shad is not an endangered species, but of course they have been affected by the humans changing their waters. Beside the problem of pollution, there are thousands of dams on rivers that used to present only milder natural obstacles for the returning fish. Some of the dams are, surprisingly, coming down, and McPhee takes us to a dam-removing ceremony. As the title implies, shad have played a role in American history. George Washington seined for shad on the Potomac. He didn't eat them; only one shad bone has turned up in the excavation of his garbage pit at Mount Vernon (and McPhee can't help an interesting digression upon "archaeozoology"). His slaves got them, and he used shad as a fertilizer. Despite the legend, his men at Valley Forge were not saved from starvation by a providential, unseasonal run of shad up the Schuylkill River. Thoreau worried about shad in their thousands meeting a new commercial dam, and wrote the lament, "Poor shad! where is thy redress?" Thoreau advised the fish, "Keep a stiff fin and stem all the tides thou mayst meet." Words to live by.

Once again, McPhee has picked an unlikely subject and made everything about it vivid, interesting, and important. If you fish, you will love this book. If you don't fish, here is a book to give you an idea about why intelligent fishermen go about their often frustrating hobby with such evident pleasure. _The Founding Fish_ is a delightful small encyclopedia on everything connected with shad.

Rating:
Summary: A Surfeit of Shad
Review: John McPhee is one of my idols. His works have their own special section on my bookshelf, and nobody else except Calvin Trillin gets that kind of treatment. I believe that McPhee can take any subject, even the most mundane, and turn it into a fascinating book.
But with "The Founding Fish," he is testing that conviction. Yes, he remains an economical stylist, a careful observer and a wry wit. Yes, he describes landscapes -- the Bay of Fundy, for instance -- with vivid clarity, and he describes the crusty old characters who populate those landscapes -- the shad trapper -- with affectionate amusement.
But holy catfish, does McPhee ever go on and on about his own fishing expeditions. He keeps a fishing journal and he took this opportunity to empty it out into this book.
As a fisherman myself (I have even caught a shad or two), I have rattled on at length about my fishing trips. But I know that describing a day of fishing is very much like describing, for instance, a round of golf. It is never as fascinating to your audience as it is to you.
I groaned inwardly whenever another section began with McPhee on the river. We hear far too much about how many bucks and roes he hooked, or failed to hook.
It is not a good sign that the book perks up the most in a section about a deep sea tournament on the Gulf Coast; i.e., the only section not about shad.
Still, McPhee has by no means lost his touch. He made the sections about shad lore, history and biology far more interesting than they had any right to be. In other words, he worked his McPhee magic on them.
Yet for a writer, it comes down to this. Keeping a fishing journal is a dangerous thing. You might be tempted to use it.

Rating:
Summary: Meandering fish tale...
Review: John McPhee is rightly regarded as a masterful writer, with a bent to outdoorsy activities. Here in Founding Fish he examines his "obsession" with a particular species, the American shad.

The shad is a fish that spawns like a salmon, living in the sea but coming home to a particular river or stream to lay eggs. McPhee covers every aspect of the shad, its habits and habitat, and the people who fish for shad. As always his writing, when viewed in chapter-sized chunks, is crisp and sparkling and fascinating.

The book, however, is somewhat dull. While a good fishing yarn requires some patience, this book meanders like a sluggish river, touching this or that topic, from dam removals to fishing habits as it wanders and wanders, twisting and turning over the same material, back and forth, in a kind of passionless amble. It takes, well, an appreciation of or obsession with the shad to carry you through this material, I think.

Anything by McPhee is better than 90% of what you'll read elsewhere (Sturgeon's Law in effect). I want to rate the book more highly because McPhee does bring to life people and events that touch upon the history of the shad, but the book as a whole is a yawn. Read it if you are a McPhee fan, otherwise I'd suggest Secret Life of Lobsters to wake you from it.

Rating:
Summary: The Mark Twain of science
Review: John McPhee is the Mark Twain of rocks and scientists and fish. Like a Cartalk.com that covers all of natural science, McPhee takes you through skeleton of a fish, the nutritional history of our Revolution and more lovely fish stories than one could hear in a life time, all done in his private blend of intellect and folksiness.
I am attracted by his love of the scientist, the multi-syllable word, and his ability to walk you through the human side of science while never feeling a strain on the line. I am hooked deeply by McPhee's ability to write, whether it is about the myth of George Washington being saved by the shad run, a fish rodeo in the gulf coast, an autopsy of a shad cleaning, the tides of the Bay of Fund or his tale of trying to land a fish on one side of the boat while shaking out a snake from his net on the other.
More delicious and digestible (and shorter) than Annals of a Former World, this book is a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: The Mark Twain of science
Review: John McPhee is the Mark Twain of rocks and scientists and fish. Like a Cartalk.com that covers all of natural science, McPhee takes you through skeleton of a fish, the nutritional history of our Revolution and more lovely fish stories than one could hear in a life time, all done in his private blend of intellect and folksiness.
I am attracted by his love of the scientist, the multi-syllable word, and his ability to walk you through the human side of science while never feeling a strain on the line. I am hooked deeply by McPhee's ability to write, whether it is about the myth of George Washington being saved by the shad run, a fish rodeo in the gulf coast, an autopsy of a shad cleaning, the tides of the Bay of Fund or his tale of trying to land a fish on one side of the boat while shaking out a snake from his net on the other.
More delicious and digestible (and shorter) than Annals of a Former World, this book is a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: The antics of the anadromous
Review: John McPhee, "a registered curmudgeon", was fishing for shad on the Delaware River one afternoon when he felt a tug. Nearly three hours later, amidst a serious debate over what was on the end of the line, a concerned wife's inquiry forwarded by a policeman, and cheers from interested spectators, McPhee pulled from the river a 4 - 3/4 pound roe shad. Clearly not a record-setter, nor an exotic species - the debate suggested bass, sturgeon and even tarpon. What prompted McPhee to relate this event in opening a lengthy account of what, to some, remains a mediocre animal? Surely, John McPhee, who has written of continental movement and extended vistas, must have a compelling reason to deal with such a mundane topic.

McPhee's reputation as a writer should need no introduction. However, if you are unacquainted with his work, you can start here with confidence. He deftly presents a melange of scientific information, "folk wisdom", history and personal experience. As with his work on geology, he entices researchers, fishermen, guides and legislators to provide him their views, which he relates with sympathy and clarity. Throughout this narrative, his own experiences are told with wit and compassion. Fishermen are great whingers, but McPhee brings a new level of sensitivity to his personal accounts. He knows there's a god when a nearby fisherman nets six fish while his hook remains empty - only a god could permit such arbitrary antics in nature.

The research and folk tales centre on a particular form of fish. Anadromous ["running up"] fish, among which salmon are the most famous, can move from an ocean environment up fresh water streams to spawn. This talent requires bizarre body chemistry, bearing immense costs. Salmon die after spawning, partly because they don't feed on the upstream run. Shad, too, remain hungry heading "home" to breed, but some shad return to the sea after mating. In some regions they may make three or four trips in a lifetime. McPhee, accompanied by fishermen and researchers, traces the history and physiology of the American shad. Other piscine species are touched on, including, of all things, a hammerhead shark. The shad, however, keeps centre stage. Once scorned as "just shad", chiefly due to its bony nature, many now acclaim its flavour when it reaches the table - hence the species name "Alosa sapidissima" - "most savoury".

Books about sports are a major industry. They suffer a common fault - they're universally inwardly focussed. Baseball fans don't read about cross-country skiing. Golfers don't read about ice hockey. And fishing? There's divided opinion about fishing among sportsmen. Golfers, baseball fans, or hockey buffs often view fishermen with kindly disdain. Up at ungodly hours, thrashing through damp woods to take up stations at a bug-infested stream or foggy lake. Not something reasonable or civilised people should do. McPhee's experiences, brought to light by his superb prose, bring fresh breadth of vision to the world of fishermen and fish. Always an unmatchable read, this latest publication of McPhee must join his other works on your shelves. You may not be a John McPhee fan when you encounter this book, but you will be when you finish it. Then pass it along to your children who will find riches and insights he provides. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: The antics of the anadromous
Review: John McPhee, "a registered curmudgeon", was fishing for shad on the Delaware River one afternoon when he felt a tug. Nearly three hours later, amidst a serious debate over what was on the end of the line, a concerned wife's inquiry forwarded by a policeman, and cheers from interested spectators, McPhee pulled from the river a 4 - 3/4 pound roe shad. Clearly not a record-setter, nor an exotic species - the debate suggested bass, sturgeon and even tarpon. What prompted McPhee to relate this event in opening a lengthy account of what, to some, remains a mediocre animal? Surely, John McPhee, who has written of continental movement and extended vistas, must have a compelling reason to deal with such a mundane topic.

McPhee's reputation as a writer should need no introduction. However, if you are unacquainted with his work, you can start here with confidence. He deftly presents a melange of scientific information, "folk wisdom", history and personal experience. As with his work on geology, he entices researchers, fishermen, guides and legislators to provide him their views, which he relates with sympathy and clarity. Throughout this narrative, his own experiences are told with wit and compassion. Fishermen are great whingers, but McPhee brings a new level of sensitivity to his personal accounts. He knows there's a god when a nearby fisherman nets six fish while his hook remains empty - only a god could permit such arbitrary antics in nature.

The research and folk tales centre on a particular form of fish. Anadromous ["running up"] fish, among which salmon are the most famous, can move from an ocean environment up fresh water streams to spawn. This talent requires bizarre body chemistry, bearing immense costs. Salmon die after spawning, partly because they don't feed on the upstream run. Shad, too, remain hungry heading "home" to breed, but some shad return to the sea after mating. In some regions they may make three or four trips in a lifetime. McPhee, accompanied by fishermen and researchers, traces the history and physiology of the American shad. Other piscine species are touched on, including, of all things, a hammerhead shark. The shad, however, keeps centre stage. Once scorned as "just shad", chiefly due to its bony nature, many now acclaim its flavour when it reaches the table - hence the species name "Alosa sapidissima" - "most savoury".

Books about sports are a major industry. They suffer a common fault - they're universally inwardly focussed. Baseball fans don't read about cross-country skiing. Golfers don't read about ice hockey. And fishing? There's divided opinion about fishing among sportsmen. Golfers, baseball fans, or hockey buffs often view fishermen with kindly disdain. Up at ungodly hours, thrashing through damp woods to take up stations at a bug-infested stream or foggy lake. Not something reasonable or civilised people should do. McPhee's experiences, brought to light by his superb prose, bring fresh breadth of vision to the world of fishermen and fish. Always an unmatchable read, this latest publication of McPhee must join his other works on your shelves. You may not be a John McPhee fan when you encounter this book, but you will be when you finish it. Then pass it along to your children who will find riches and insights he provides. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]