Mr McPhee-ly
Three By McPhee
Reviewed by Laurence Windham

One of my favorite living authors is a fellow named John McPhee. His writing style is journalistic, colorful, and compelling. I would not be surprised if McPhee's rough drafts were written on canvas with a paint brush. Every person and place and situation comes alive as you read his accounts of man's struggle with nature, bureaucracy, ideas, and man himself. There is a natural flow of wit and wisdom in each of his books that every McPhee reader has come to expect and enjoy.

My first McPhee book came to me by way of my good friend, David Wilson, who wrote the following on the inside cover, "To Laurence, this is to prepare you for your journey to the land of 'mountain freeze dried caribou cud.' Good providence." Nothing could be more fitting for a McPhee book as that inscription.

This particular volume is labelled Coming into the Country, a phrase used by residents of the state of Alaska among each other for the purpose of inquiring when a person had settled into the great 49th. McPhee tells the stories of how and why the subjects of his book moved to the far north. They all were looking for something bigger than themselves, a land that wasn't fully mapped, a place where they could find themselves. Their sense of purpose, desire for adventure, and entrepreneurial hopes makes for a great read.

My second McPhee book was The Control of Nature. Here the author describes three governmental agencies attempting to manipulate and contain the local environment. Described in this book is man's struggle with the Mississippi River, the avalanches and mudslides of Los Angeles, and the catastrophic lava flow in Iceland. Yep, hard to put down.

The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed is a history of a group of engineers, pilots, and zealots committed to the rebirth of the airship, the helium filled dirigibles. They believe that if these huge balloon-type vessels were redesigned they could move more freight than all the trucking companies and railroads combined. And do it more easily, and cheaply. They could transport more passengers paying cheaper fares than the bus companies do. The way MacPhee renders their vision might well make a believer out of you.

He has also written a book on the decline of the American Merchant Marine. At one time this organization comprised the great fleets of US ships responsible for the transport and trade of products, wares and food. Now only a few ships are still operating, having been supplanted by the merchant marines of other countries. Looking for a Ship begins with a sailor running for what appears to be his life. The book ends ingeniously, the opposite of how it started, with the loss of all motion. The reader, however, is not immobile, but soon on their way to the bookstore for another dose of MacPhee. There are, of course, obvious lessons from these books for the Christian to glean. So run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore.

The Game by the Book
Baseball - An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns
Reviewed by R.C. Sproul Jr.

I'm a little suspicious of Ken Burns. Though everyone told me he did a comparatively fair job, any man who could make a mini-series about the War of Northern Aggression, and get it aired on government television, surely did not understand the war. I don't believe in miracles. Nevertheless, I was willing, for love of the game, to begin his book on baseball. I was not disappointed.

As with the mini-series on which the book is based, we are given nine innings of the history of the game. Like an agile shortstop, chapter one covers a lot of ground, covering the birth of the game up to the beginning of the twentieth century. We read about soldiers wearing themselves ragged in camp, and traveling barnstormers taking the game to every one-horse town in the country. We discover that the line between the game and marketing has always been a blurry one, even in this ancient golden age. Each of the other eight chapters covers a decade.

What we get as we read is not some dull chronology of who won which series, and who won which batting title, but a glimpse into the heart of the game as it evolved over time. Burns neither fawns over history's heroes, nor slights them. He mixes his pitches, here giving a thorough glimpse into the mind of the Babe there telling anecdotes of life in the Negro leagues.

We also get a sense of the history of the struggles between labor and management, between players and owners. Burns, while by no means excusing those who betrayed the game, spent some time painting the owner of what came to be known as the 1919 Black Sox as a tight-fisted chiseler.

This book, like the mini-series, goes a long way in calling back to the game wayward fans like me. Those of us disillusioned by free agency and the revolving door in most dugouts, with players chasing money, and teams chasing talent, and the fans wondering which nine mercenaries they'll be rooting for on a given day, will revel in the nostalgia. In giving a history it reminds us of the history, that while there have always been stars, that once upon a magic time, the game was about the game, that once upon a time, whether in Brooklyn, or Boston, Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, people loved their team not because they showed up regularly on Sportscenter, but because it was their team. The book makes me homesick for my youth, and for the Forbes Field I never saw. I come away from the book knowing the game better, and loving the game more. But in the end, I come away missing what has been missing more than when I began the book. In the end, I was more interested in the book than the modern game. In the end I wanted extra innings, or better yet, to hear Ernie Banks declare, "What a beautiful day for baseball. Let's play two."