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    Oranges
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    Oranges
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    Oranges
    Ebook145 pages2 hours

    Oranges

    By John McPhee

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    McPhee is a grand master of narrative non-fiction.' – Guardian

    Inspired by the glass of freshly-squeezed juice he bought every day on his morning commute, Pulitzer Prize-winner John McPhee takes us on an idiosyncratic and re¬markable journey in search of the world’s most popular fruit.

    With his trademark style and enchanting wit, he unravels the rich history and fas¬cinating cultivation of this botanical marvel. Beginning with the fruit’s origins in Southeast Asia, McPhee travels from the great orangeries be¬longing to Louis XIV, to the shores of Andalucia, and through the endless groves in Florida. Along the way he introduces the people whose live¬lihood depends on the world’s insatiable demand for the fruit: orange pickers, a citrus scientist, and an orange baron worth over $20 million.

    In his inimitable and endlessly compelling prose, McPhee reveals the story behind this extraordinary fruit. Your morning glass of juice will never be the same.

    ‘His genius is that he can write about anything.’ – Robert Macfarlane

    ‘A delicious book . . . more absorbing than many a novel.’ – Harper’s
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDaunt Books
    Release dateOct 20, 2016
    ISBN9781907970870
    Author

    John McPhee

    John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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    Reviews for Oranges

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      The subject is oranges, “once the fruit of the gods,” before they finally became “a fruit of the community.” Originally published in 1967, Oranges was a New Yorker article extended into this elegant, entertaining history. The passages about the now diminished Florida orange industry (“nearly fifty million orange trees”) are historical in nature. The state’s yield is a fraction of what it was at the time due to freezes, overdevelopment and disease.John McPhee, always a compelling writer, traces the history of oranges in culture and art throughout the world. The fruit holds a special significance in Florida, where many of us remember when oranges, and citrus in general, were responsible for a large part of the state’s charm.
    • 4/5
      Written in the '70's, things have changed in Florida and in the orange market, but McPhee's writing is timeless. This book, like many of his works, is a slender volume. I was able to read it in just a couple afternoons. With his lively descriptions and 'first person' style, make it a smooth read and you learn a thing or two to boot!
    • 3/5
      Originally intended to be a magazine story, Oranges is a short book all about oranges. McPhee meets with growers, pickers, scientists, and others to bring the reader a fascinating picture of oranges and the industries surrounding them.

      I liked the beginning and the end of the book the best. The middle dealt mostly with the cultural history of the orange and the history of orange groves in Florida, neither of which were particularly interesting to me. Other parts of the book were much more fascinating. McPhee explores the history and production of orange juice concentrate, growing and grafting techniques, and the expansion of the orange industry. At one point, one of McPhee's interviewee comments, "We are growing chemicals now, not oranges," as he relates that many of the oranges were being used to make artificial flavorings, cattle feed, and chemicals used in fighting forest fires.

      The book was written in 1967, so the information was quite dated. I'm sure the modern food industry has found many more ways to manipulate the orange and its juice and make use of its chemical components. I would love to read an updated version. Parts of the book were definitely four star material, but I had to settle with three.
    • 3/5
      Like a long encyclopedic entry this book tells you everything there is to know about oranges...where they come from, how they settled in the US, the history of the Florida orange growers, how to grow the best oranges..etc, etc. I want to eat more varieties of oranges and grow my own tree now.