The Control of Nature

The Control of Nature is John McPhee's bestselling account of places where people are locked in combat with nature. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking is his depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those attempting to wrest control from her—stubborn, sometimes foolhardy, more often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

©1989 John McPhee (P)2025 Tantor Media

it's all about violating nature

good job accounting for man's huberous. fascinating experience of what happens violating good sense and self fulfilling/perpetual foolishness.

An older work by John McPhee on why attempts to control the force of nature rarely succeed

This 1989 book by McPhee covers three regions where engineers try and usyally fail to hold back natural forces: the Mississippi river delta, volcanic lava flow in Iceland, and the San Gabriel mountain debris flows near Los Angeles. As always McPhee is too long-winded, but much of this is worth hearing. Narrator Gardner is superb.