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The Founding Fish
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The Founding Fish Paperback - 2003

by John McPhee

Lauded as "a fishing classic" ("The Economist") upon its publication in hardcover, McPhee's 26th book is a braid of personal history, natural history, and American history, in descending order of volume.


About this book

McPhee’s twenty-sixth book is a fascinating example of personal history, natural history, and American history in descending order. Every spring, American shad-Alosa sapidissima leave the ocean in groups of thousands and run distances upriver to spawn. 

John McPhee, a shad fisherman himself, recounts the shad’s role in the lives of George Washington and Henry David Thoreau. He fishes with and visits the laboratories of famous ichthyologists during which he takes instruction in the making of the darts from a master of the art, fishes in various North American rivers, and cooks shad in a variety of ways. In the words of Bill Pride for The Denver post, he "fishes the same way he writes books, avidly and intensely. He wants to know everything about the fish he's after, its history, its habits, its place in the cosmos"

From the publisher

John McPhee's twenty-sixth book is a braid of personal history, natural history, and American history, in descending order of volume. Each spring, American shad-Alosa sapidissima-leave the ocean in hundreds of thousands and run heroic distances upriver to spawn. McPhee--a shad fisherman himself--recounts the shad's cameo role in the lives of George Washington and Henry David Thoreau. He fishes with and visits the laboratories of famous ichthyologists; he takes instruction in the making of shad darts from a master of the art; and he cooks shad in a variety of ways, delectably explained at the end of the book. Mostly, though, he goes fishing for shad in various North American rivers, and he "fishes the same way he writes books, avidly and intensely. He wants to know everything about the fish he's after--its history, its habits, its place in the cosmos" (Bill Pride, The Denver Post). His adventures in pursuit of shad occasion the kind of writing--expert and ardent--at which he has no equal.

First line

I hadn't been a shad fisherman all my days, only seven years, on the May evening when this story begins-in a johnboat, flat and square, anchored in heavy current by the bridge in Lambertville, on the wall of the eddy below the fourth pier.

First Edition Identification

This book was first published in 2002 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. This book is octavo with beige boards, black lettering on the spine, and a colorful dust jacket depicting shad by Sherman F. Denton. 


Details

  • Title The Founding Fish
  • Author John McPhee
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First edition
  • Pages 368
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
  • Date 2003-09-10
  • ISBN 9780374528836 / 0374528837
  • Weight 0.85 lbs (0.39 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 in (20.83 x 13.72 x 2.29 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects American shad, Shad fishing - North America - History
  • Dewey Decimal Code 597.45

Media reviews

Citations

  • New York Times, 09/14/2003, Page 28

About the author

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 nearly 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), 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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