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For more than 70 years, John McPhee has written stories about real people in the world, transforming the genre of nonfiction writing in the process. He has published so many words (more than three million) in multitudes of places that even his most ardent readers have not been able to keep track and see it all. Until the publication of Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee, which locates it all and tells the story of his career.
McPhee has been for 60 years one of the leading staff writers for the New Yorker, among the world's most beloved and respected magazines. Geared to readers devoted to McPhee's work as well as those new to it, this book explores and documents his New Yorker work and much other writing that has been rarely seen or never before connected with McPhee, including his remarkable early stories for Time magazine that were published without his name on them.
“John McPhee is a master and his readers deserve to know where to find every last nugget of his work. With his exacting bibliography, Noel Rubinton draws the map with the care and precision of his subject. Any reader of John McPhee will be grateful to own and refer to Looking for a Story. He leads you, again and again, to where the gold is.”
—David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker
“Noel Rubinton has dug hard, collected John McPhee’s hidden gems, and fashioned a volume that documents the dazzling array of work by the most influential nonfiction writer of our time. Looking for a Story is aptly rigorous, like McPhee’s reporting, demonstrating a passion for the details that add up to a portrait of the man and his craft.”
—Marc Fisher, associate editor and columnist, Washington Post
"Rubinton's book offers McPhee's fans a complete bibliographical and critical guide to his writings, from his earliest jottings, through years of NPR interviews, to books and essays. . . . The fact remains that you can still learn to write a sentence from McPhee: Readers can use this book as a guide."
—Kirkus Reviews