John McPhee is well known for long lucid articles, many published in The New
Yorker. He is not strictly a science writer. But in The Second John McPhee
Reader (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27.50, ISBN 0 374 25686 1) he tackles
subjects such as plate tectonics with intense enjoyment and a vivid eye, lacing
information with humour and much racy, professional conversation with the
geologists concerned. Marvellous stuff.
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