This book was difficult for me to rate, since it is really a compilation of three separate books into one volume. The first two books I would give 3/5 stars, while the third book (the one actually entitled "Coming Into the Country") is superb and deserves 5 stars. Thus, my averaged 4-star rating.

I found the first two books very interesting and readable, but they tended to delve off into a more philosophical orientation describing the history of Alaska, which I deemed long-winded at times. The third book, however, kept my attention perked and was just what I was hoping for when I purchased this book -- a look into the life of an Alaskan bushman -- since it was told through stories of people the author meets along the way during his long stint in the bush, which complimented his writing passion.

A good book and well worth the read.

My wife and I like to listen to a tape while we read the book. We are rereading this book that way. It is a classic and a good introduction to Alaska, where we have lived and worked and touristed.

This book is a wonderful relic, the last plausible vision of a living American frontier. In the mid seventies, McPhee went to Alaska to do a few pieces for the New Yorker. He met a lot of trappers, prospectors, and "river people" who'd built moss-chinked cabins and whose individualism, gruff hospitality, and happiness he admired. McPhee made a plea for democratic access to Alaskan land. He argued that land far from roads should remain fair game for homesteaders in perpetuity.

It is odd to read an ode to Alaska's wild immensity at a time when islands are being evacuated in the Aleutians, polar bears are drowning, and the permafrost is melting. The question these days is not whether Americans can still choose to live in more or less untainted outback. The question is whether that outback will soon be transformed beyond recognition, not by oil drilling, but by climate change.

What Coming into the Country offers the twenty-first century is escapism and nostalgia. McPhee's account of the political squabbles over the location of Alaska's capital has lost its relevance, but the rest of the book still comes to life. We meet a mix of clannish Christians, proud native people, and prickly bootleggers in the small, dry town of Eagle. McPhee's tale of a man's survival in sub-zero weather after a plane crash constitutes a minor classic of its own.

The book reminds us how powerful the frontier fantasy remains in American psyches. Can it be harnessed as a metaphor? Can the dream of self-reliance on a private patch of woods help motivate us, indirectly, to cut carbon emissions? It has motivated us to go camping and conserve some wild lands even while ruining others. Still, I suspect that as the environmental movement shifts in response to global warming, we may have to jettison the frontier fantasy. It depends too much on a view of nature as more powerful than man. Whether or not we agree with Bill McKibben that we have arrived at the end of nature, we know that everything is responding to elevated temperatures. There is no untouched patch of land left in Alaska. The romance of a homestead sours when the flora and fauna are marching north past the log cabin, driven by coal and oil fires from all over the planet.

This book is a wonderful relic, the last plausible vision of a living American frontier. In the mid seventies, McPhee went to Alaska to do a few pieces for the New Yorker. He met a lot of trappers, prospectors, and "river people" who'd built moss-chinked cabins and whose individualism, gruff hospitality, and happiness he admired. McPhee made a plea for democratic access to Alaskan land. He argued that land far from roads should remain fair game for homesteaders in perpetuity.

It is odd to read an ode to Alaska's wild immensity at a time when islands are being evacuated in the Aleutians, polar bears are drowning, and the permafrost is melting. The question these days is not whether Americans can still choose to live in more or less untainted outback. The question is whether that outback will soon be transformed beyond recognition, not by oil drilling, but by climate change.

What Coming into the Country offers the twenty-first century is escapism and nostalgia. McPhee's account of the political squabbles over the location of Alaska's capital has lost its relevance, but the rest of the book still comes to life. We meet a mix of clannish Christians, proud native people, and prickly bootleggers in the small, dry town of Eagle. McPhee's tale of a man's survival in sub-zero weather after a plane crash constitutes a minor classic of its own.

The book reminds us how powerful the frontier fantasy remains in American psyches. Can it be harnessed as a metaphor? Can the dream of self-reliance on a private patch of woods help motivate us, indirectly, to cut carbon emissions? It has motivated us to go camping and conserve some wild lands even while ruining others. Still, I suspect that as the environmental movement shifts in response to global warming, we may have to jettison the frontier fantasy. It depends too much on a view of nature as more powerful than man. Whether or not we agree with Bill McKibben that we have arrived at the end of nature, we know that everything is responding to elevated temperatures. There is no untouched patch of land left in Alaska. The romance of a homestead sours when the flora and fauna are marching north past the log cabin, driven by coal and oil fires from all over the planet.

Want to read about the realities of the 49th state????
Want to really learn something about this region???
Want to get good visuals????????
If NOT don't read this book!!!!!!!!!!!!

I traveled to Alaska in 2006 but lived there in the early 70's. Why I delayed so long in reading "Coming into the Country" I don't know, but John McPhee has taken me back to that earlier day. Both his character and place descriptions are wonderful and make me long for the cabins, the ice break-up, the dogs, the bush planes, and the 55 gallon drums. The Anchorage of today is much changed, but the bush is still there -- Thank God.

I traveled to Alaska in 2006 but lived there in the early 70's. Why I delayed so long in reading "Coming into the Country" I don't know, but John McPhee has taken me back to that earlier day. Both his character and place descriptions are wonderful and make me long for the cabins, the ice break-up, the dogs, the bush planes, and the 55 gallon drums. The Anchorage of today is much changed, but the bush is still there -- Thank God.

We bought this book in Nome, Alaska on a visit there in 2001 (my brother owns a flying service there). I took my time reading it the first time. Coming into the Country is not a book to be read quickly, but, rather, one to be savored, taking time for the details to seep into the crevices of one's memory until they become part of one's knowledge base. Every page holds a vast amount of information that if read too quickly blurs to nothingness and is lost.

McPhee's descriptions of the land, its rivers and mountains, its challenges, its beauty, and its people are thorough and draw the reader into the pages of his book. It takes a certain kind of person to survive in the Alaskan bush. I, for one, am drawn to its splendor, its starkness, its fearsomeness, but am sure I don't have the right stuff to live there long term. The river people and others, who thrive in communities like Eagle and Central (even Fairbanks and Juneau), have remarkable stamina and a strong determination to live the lives they choose in their respective settings, all of which are breathtaking in their beauty. McPhee also writes of the tension between the races (Indian and white)and the human dynamic among community members (the good and the no-so-good)that always accompanies the sharing of space and resources.

Over the past five years, I've picked up CITC now and then to re-read parts of it. Most recently, I re-read the whole of Part III Coming into the Country. This is my favorite section because it focuses on the bush and its people, most particularly on Eagle, Alaska located on the Yukon River and just across the International Boundary from Canada's Yukon Territory. (Incidentally, the term "coming into the country" refers to the arrival of a person into the Alaskan bush with the intent of staying. I may move from Michigan to Ohio or New York or California, but, if I go to Alaska, they call it coming into the country. "Brad Snow and Lily Allen came into the country in 1973." "Joe Vogler came into the country in 1944." "John Borg came into the country in 1966" (and he's still there. Check out the Eagle site. Borg has worn many hats in Eagle and still sits on the board of the Eagle Historical Society and Museum. Borg's wife, Betty, is the board's treasurer).

The original copyright on this book is 1976, thirty years ago. The growth in technology since that time has allowed almost every municipality to have their own website. Eagle is no exception. [...]

Carolyn Rowe Hill

We bought this book in Nome, Alaska on a visit there in 2001 (my brother owns a flying service there). I took my time reading it the first time. Coming into the Country is not a book to be read quickly, but, rather, one to be savored, taking time for the details to seep into the crevices of one's memory until they become part of one's knowledge base. Every page holds a vast amount of information that if read too quickly blurs to nothingness and is lost.

McPhee's descriptions of the land, its rivers and mountains, its challenges, its beauty, and its people are thorough and draw the reader into the pages of his book. It takes a certain kind of person to survive in the Alaskan bush. I, for one, am drawn to its splendor, its starkness, its fearsomeness, but am sure I don't have the right stuff to live there long term. The river people and others, who thrive in communities like Eagle and Central (even Fairbanks and Juneau), have remarkable stamina and a strong determination to live the lives they choose in their respective settings, all of which are breathtaking in their beauty. McPhee also writes of the tension between the races (Indian and white)and the human dynamic among community members (the good and the no-so-good)that always accompanies the sharing of space and resources.

Over the past five years, I've picked up CITC now and then to re-read parts of it. Most recently, I re-read the whole of Part III Coming into the Country. This is my favorite section because it focuses on the bush and its people, most particularly on Eagle, Alaska located on the Yukon River and just across the International Boundary from Canada's Yukon Territory. (Incidentally, the term "coming into the country" refers to the arrival of a person into the Alaskan bush with the intent of staying. I may move from Michigan to Ohio or New York or California, but, if I go to Alaska, they call it coming into the country. "Brad Snow and Lily Allen came into the country in 1973." "Joe Vogler came into the country in 1944." "John Borg came into the country in 1966" (and he's still there. Check out the Eagle site. Borg has worn many hats in Eagle and still sits on the board of the Eagle Historical Society and Museum. Borg's wife, Betty, is the board's treasurer).

The original copyright on this book is 1976, thirty years ago. The growth in technology since that time has allowed almost every municipality to have their own website. Eagle is no exception. [...]

Carolyn Rowe Hill

I first read the book 20 years ago. Last year when my father-in-law took us on an Alaskan cruise, I bought the book again because I figured that I would be bored stiff on the cruise. Besides giving a history of Alaska, the thing about the book most notable is the depiction of the people that moved there from 'Anytown' USA. Very trippy.

I just finished what I think is one of the true books of Alaska, John McPhee's Coming into the Country. The non-fiction work breaks apart into three subsections, each dealing with an aspect of Alaska that many people who visit for only a short time don't see. Nor should they necessarily; it is clear through the book's 400 plus pages that McPhee, a man from New Jersey, has not only done his homework but gone to great lengths to find the "true Alaska."

The first section, entitled The Encircled River, follows a group of five men (McPhee including himself) as they travel down the Salmon River in the Brooks Range in norther Alaska, whose watershed is "wholly above the Arctic Circle." The men are surveying the Salmon River for possible inclusion in the list of national wild rivers, which would set aside the river and its immediate environs as unalterable wild terrain. At the time of the writing, 1977, Congress was still considering the legislation.

The descriptions of travel down the Salmon merge into a stream of conscious meditation on wildland conservation, the shortage of good fishing in Anchorage, and the native people who live in northwestern Alaska. This section presents the reader with a lay of the land, both physical and emotional, and defines the boundaries of the political, ethical, and moral dilemmas that challenged Alaskans in those pre-pipeline years and that still linger today.

The second section, What They Were Hunting For, is a wonderful snapshot of the original movement in Alaska to move the capital from Juneau to a location closer to Anchorage. Juneau is ringed on all sides by mountains and ocean, providing access for state legislators and the public they represent only via oceangoing ferry or a harrowing and often unreliable plane ride. This isolation was seen as a burden to the represented, a boon to their representitives.

McPhee accompanies the Capital Site Selection Committee as it tours by helicopter potential sites north of Anchorage, most notably near Talkeetna and Juneau. Among the committee members are such famous Alaskans and Arliss Sturgulewski and Willie Hensley. McPhee seems to have an uncanny ability to place himself at the center of the action.

McPhee provides a lengthy history of the naming of Juneau and how the town was founded, suggesting that while its birth and existence may be credited to drunken prospectors' blind luck, this history is as Alaskan as any and justifies naming the town capital.

Better still, McPhee provides some very telling descriptions of Anchorage (my home town) in its 70s heyday. As evidenced here:


"Anchorage is sometimes excused in the name of pioneering. Build now, civilize later. But Anchorage is not a frontier town. It is virtually unrelated to its environment. It has come in on the wind, an American spore. A large cookie cutter brought down on El Paso could lift something like Anchorage into the air. Anchorage is the northern rim of Trenton, the center of Oxnard, the ocean-blind precincts of Dayton Beach. It is condensed, instant Albuquerque."


McPee appreciates the boom nature of Anchorage, the drive of its citizens to consume. But McPhee is quick to point out this development is not in a vacuum and gives us context in descriptions of the ring of mountains and ocean "stunning against the morning and in the evening light" that surround and cradle the town.

But all of this is building material, foundation for the final and longest chapter whose name also graces the cover of the book itself, Coming Into the Country. The phrase is Alaska backcountry slang for moving into the bush. McPhee spends the bulk of this chapter himself coming into the country, living all four seasons in Eagle, Alaska, nestled in east-central Alaska along the Yukon River. Here, if any feelings of distrust have developed in the reader's mind from McPhee's disparaging remarks about Anchorage or his awkwardness with wilderness travel, all is forgiven. McPhee's portrait of the people who inhabit Eagle as a place and a time is magical. McPhee describes in the words of one Eagle resident the importance of Alaska as a location on the landscape of the American mind:


"In the society as a whole, there is an elemental need for a frontier outlet, for a pioneer place to go - important even to those who do not go there. People are entioning outer space as, in this respect, all we have left. All we have left is Alaska, which, on the individual level, and by virtue of its climate, will always screen its own, and will not be overrun."

McPhee is fair with the local populace - allowing himself to be taken in by a miner's plea upon destroying the ecosystem around a creekbed that the mine is just a "cork in the sea." After rationalizing the destruction in his own head, despite the meager gains of a salt shaker's worth of gold, McPhee declares: "In the ecomilitia, bust me to private."

MePhee also reconciles his fear of bears that manifested itself in the first chapter. Upon his first taste of ursa horibilis McPhee waxes: "In strange communion, I had chewed the flag, consumed the symbol of the total wild, and, from that meal forward, if a bear should ever wish to reciprocate, it would only be what I deserve." In the hands of a less adroit craftsman, this sentiment would risk audience alienation by revealing the author's own still-unrecognized naivetee but McPhee is forgiven and admitted into the fold of his new more wild self.

On such topics as the Alaska state flag, McPhee is equally generous and gives hints at the change Alaska has wrought within his own self.


"The flag, as it happens, was designed by a native. It is lyrically simple, the most beautiful of all American flags. On its dark-blue field, gold stars form the constellation of the Great Bear. Above that is the North Star. Nothing else, as the designer explained, is needed to represent Alaska. It was the flag of the Territory for more than thirty years. Alaskans requested that it become the flag of the new state. The designer was a thirteen-year-old Aleut boy."


While McPhee's painting of the Alaskan soul leaves patches untended, and while the pre-pipeline boom attitude is beginning to feel threadbare at the edges, there is something in McPhee's account that touches bedrock. His myriad anecdotes, woven together with thoughtfully placed historical facts and enlightened yet spare commentary are more than the sum of their parts. There is a feeling upon leaving this book that McPhee somehow got it, got why we are here, and more importantly, what our hopes and visions may lead us to.

"Coming into the Country" is a classic that every visitor to Alaska should read. But the first two sections can be skipped by most people. Section one, "The Encircled River" is about the Kobruk River, and section two, "What they Were Hunting For" is a funny tale of the defunct effort to establish a new Alaskan capital city.

Section three, titled "Coming into the Country" describes the people and region of Eagle, population 100 plus a loose scattering of rural homesteaders. The time is the late 1970s when Alaskan lands are being divided up into national parks, native american, state, federal and private lands. McPhee seems to have interviewed about everybody in Eagle to get a cross section of views -- most of them anti-government and libertarian. He probes deep into the Alaska psyche by simply recording what people told him.

What of the homesteaders? I admire their individuality and hardiness -- but their bulldozers and airplanes seem incompatible with living simply in the woods. Someone once said that the greatest boon to homesteaders was food stamps; thus their lifestyle is more than a bit artificial and dependent upon there being very few people inhabiting large areas of land. On the other hand, do the "posey sniffers" (as they call environmentalists) have the right to dictate to Alaskans how they conduct themselves and what they do with their land? Would New Yorkers on Fifth Avenue resent Alaskan advice on the management of Central Park?

The struggle between the environmentalists and the Alaskans continues to this day. In the little town of Wrangell last summer, the Greenpeace ship "Arctic Sunrise" paid a call and was promptly slapped with a summons for violating environmental laws. Greenpeace fled the scene, but was convicted of failing to have an "oil spill prevention plan," which seems a serious omission by an outfit that protests oil spills for a vocation.

I'd like to see an update of McPhee's book. What's happened to the homesteaders he interviewed? I suspect that most of them have long since abandoned their cabins and returned to civilization, possibly to be replaced by a new group seeking the solace in the wilderness that is the goal of both homesteaders and posey sniffers, each in his own way. This is a good book of objective reporting which both groups can enjoy.

Smallchief

The only reason this book doesn't rate five stars is because the middle section, "What They Were Hunting For" (about the search for a new state capital) is a bit dated and can't really measure up to the rest of the book. But the first section, "The Encircled River" is an amazing piece of prose. This book was written 30 years ago, and when I re-read "The Encircled River", I feel like I've been given the gift of seeing with my own eyes, what was then one of the last untouched wildernesses in the world. The final section, "Coming into the Country", is absolutely fascinating, a story of people who have sought out and continue to search for a life that few Americans could even begin to imagine.

McPhee is one of the great writers of our time. He can take topics that I might otherwise find dull, and transform them into page-turners. When given the subject of Alaska, he does better than that.

I bought this book as a way to get to know Alaska a little bit before a cruise this summer up the Inside Passage. While it is arguably a little dated - it was written in the 70s - I found the history, background and flavor to be fascinating and valuable. As I was flying over the Susitna River to Mt McKinley, I could see the geological features that made it an unsuitable but still desirable location for a new Alaskan capital.

Alaska is, if nothing else, a big place, and this book, by examing three parts of the state, gives you a sense of the land and the people like nothing - except going there - does.

John McPhee is a wonderful writer, and I would read - and recommend - anything of his. (Do yourself a favor, though, and stay away from Michener's "Alaska." By the time I got from the moving of the landmasses up to the wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers - still about 10,000 years ago - I was so bored I quit.)

I bought this book as a way to get to know Alaska a little bit before a cruise this summer up the Inside Passage. While it is arguably a little dated - it was written in the 70s - I found the history, background and flavor to be fascinating and valuable. As I was flying over the Susitna River to Mt McKinley, I could see the geological features that made it an unsuitable but still desirable location for a new Alaskan capital.

Alaska is, if nothing else, a big place, and this book, by examing three parts of the state, gives you a sense of the land and the people like nothing - except going there - does.

John McPhee is a wonderful writer, and I would read - and recommend - anything of his. (Do yourself a favor, though, and stay away from Michener's "Alaska." By the time I got from the moving of the landmasses up to the wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers - still about 10,000 years ago - I was so bored I quit.)

Having formed my impression of Alaska by reading Jack London stories and Into the Wild, I expected Coming into the Country to describe a harsh, brutish and often deadly land. Instead, it highlighted many of the virtues of Alaska--the diverse people who reside there, the unsettled countryside and sense of freedom. He doesn't avoid the topic of people who froze to death in their shacks or disappeared on flights through the bush, but these are just used as entertaining anecdotes to remind the reader that Alaska is still wild. This is a very well written and entertaining book and it does an excellent job of describing the complex politics and ecology of Alaska as well as the incredible beauty of the state. If you are hoping to travel to Alaska or simply want to learn more about the state and its residents who choose to live in the middle of no where in one of the harshest climates on earth, this is an excellent book. It is good pleasure reading as well, but perhaps not beach reading so much as a good bed time or lunch hour book.

In the mid 1970s, John McPhee turned his powers of description toward Alaska at a time when the "Alaskan way of life" was under siege. Alaska had been a state less than 20 years. The claims of natives to the land had been resolved by putting millions of acres in the hands of native corporations. The old "tradition" of immigrants to the land being able to plop down and build a cabin almost anywhere was disappearing under the burden of new regulations. Huge new national parks were designated, and at the same time the pipeline was being constructed, highlighting the old conflict between development and ecology, between preservation and self-determination.

Sadly, the Alaska that McPhee wrote about no longer exists. In the first segment, he writes about the Brooks Range wilderness, and discusses the controversy around establishing the "Gates of the Arctic" National Park there. That park is now established. In the second segment, he writes about the aftereffects of the decision to move the state capital from Juneau to somewhere north of Anchorage. That move never occurred. In the third (and longest and most compelling) segment, he reports on the lives of the people of isolated Eagle, Alaska, a town that today boasts a fax machine.

The third segment is where McPhee's writing really shines: I don't think anyone has ever conveyed the personality of Alaska and Alaskans as well as McPhee has. My favorite was the story of how one man and his son managed to get an entire C9 Caterpillar bulldozer into the middle of nowhere, clearing their way through 70-foot winter drifts, to set up a gold dredging operation. McPhee conveys the extreme beauty and wildness of the place, and the fire and determination of the people to belong to it.

I was sad but impressed to find McPhee accurately foretelling the Exxon Valdez tragedy by predicting that an oil spill in Prince William Sound was the greatest threat to Alaska's environmental health. However, McPhee's account is remarkably balanced; if you're looking for polemic (either pro or anti-environmentalism, for example), you won't find it.

In sum, I give this book five stars for the quality of the writing and the insight, but four for being somewhat dated. If you want to learn more about what Alaska was like, you couldn't do better than this, but if you want to know what it's like NOW, you might prefer to supplement this otherwise wonderful book with something else.

John McPhee is simply a great writer. His skill is the leading character of this novel which is full of intriguing individuals.

From characters like the author himself -- who changes and is challenged himself by the environment -- to fellow canoe riders, to grisslies, to yuppie suburbanites, to the self-made, this book delves into what makes people move to Alaska, to adapt, to stay, to survive, to be frustrated, and to not want to be anywhere else.

John McPhee is one of my favorite authors - his substantial "Annals of a Former World" sublime. Thus, it was with no small amount of anticipation that I began his narrated experiences of 1970's Alaska entitled Coming into the Country.

Coming into the Country is written in somewhat desultory thirds. The first of which, describing a trip down the Salmon River in the company of state and federal wildlife officials, provides the better reading of the three. The second relates the aborted attempt of the state, flush with speculative oil money, to build a shining new capital in the bush thereby relegating Juneau to the remote backwater that many in the state already considered it to be.

McPhee ends his book with a lengthy description of Eagle, Alaska and the residents therein. Alaskans, arguably the last of America's frontiersmen, continue to provide some measure of awe to us of the "lower 48". To his credit, McPhee uncovers some truly heroic characters, but a fair percentage are merely misanthropes whose appearance in outpost Alaska, though unquestionably providential, presents more an unintended and wearing parody than the serious subject matter McPhee presumably seeks.

Still, Coming into the Country provides an intriguing if dated look at an American anomaly. Alaska remains an outpost where most Americans will never set foot. Though our 49th state, it seemingly exists a world apart from the rest of the country. Cruise ships may bring tourists to littoral rest stops, but how can any of us from the outside truly comprehend the scale of such a land? Coming into the Country provides at least a kernel of comprehension but, more importantly, a hunger to hunt for more.

Great book - as usual for McPhee. The best book on Alaska.

McPhee lets the reader feel just how huge Alaska is-almost wider than the mind. From geological to political history Coming into the Country shows how it got that way. I picked this up at the airport in Fairbanks, and kept it in my pack to savor after returning to the wilds of Philadelphia. McPhee's sense of adventure and storytelling, his close interaction with the people and the land, make this the Portable Alaska.

In the late 1970's my mother and father were inspired by John McPhee's Coming Into the Country to the point of venturing out onto the open highway. I was but two years old, headed across America, from Georgia to Alaska, towards Eagle, the tiny community that McPhee discusses with a keen eye in the third section of his book. I spent my childhood in that community and it would not be until I was fully grown that I would actually read his book. Just a couple of years ago, when I was attending college in Georgia, I became homesick for Alaska and decided to read the book that had been so impressive to my parents. I was amazed by McPhee's way of seeing the truth in something foreign to him -- how he described the people of Eagle. I highly recommend this book to all those who wish to venture into the land of Alaska, whether in their actual travels or in their imagination.

Again and again we hear it, but it's true: John McPhee can interest a reader in anything. He manages to combine a richly sedimented prose, which frequently rises to a level of virtuosity of which 95% of novelists would be envious, with a tangible involvement in the activities of the people he writes about. And he does always write, first and foremost, about people. 'Coming into the Country' is McPhee's longest single book and contains about ten capsule biographies (and quite a bit of modest autobiography, too) in addition to observations on the hibernation of bears, the various techniques of panning for gold, the advantages of sled-dogs against snow-machines, the failings of bush-pilots, and three-dozen other disquisitions.

Without wishing to carp, I do think that the book is a shade too long -- the final section 'Coming into the Country' could profitably have been pruned of about forty pages -- but the greater length does allow the reader to see the effort McPhee goes to to provide his stories with an aesthetically pleasing structure. The first section, 'The Encircled River' deposits us, in medias res, halfway down a tributary of one of Alaska's northenmost rivers. McPhee and his companions travel downriver to the confluence of a larger river, and then we head back to the headwaters of the earlier river -- the story describes an encircling pattern. The second part 'What they were looking for' is a very funny record of a helicopter trip taken by a committee established to decide on a new capital for Alaska. Here the story skips around the theme as the chopper skips around proposed sites for the new metropolis. It's in the final section which gives the book its title that McPhee really lets loose, leaping from the present to the past, from those living on the river to those encamped in the small town of Eagle, back to the Indian village, on to a white mountain trapper and his Indian wife, back to the first goldrush era in the Yukon valley, all the time incorporating off-the-record views of Eagle townspeople, journal entries, his own observations of the breathtaking landscape. It's a tour-de-force. McPhee is the best journalist in the English-speaking world. Alaska is a wonderful place. The meeting of the two is something to behold.

John McPhee, it's often noted, can write about anythying and make it interesting, so when he tackles a subject as broad and fascinating as Alaska you know you're in for a treat.

The book is divided into three parts; it begins in modern Urban Alaska, with the story of its history and contemporary society. From McPhee takes you to the remote villages and towns, a place still populated by Native peoples and rugged outdoorsmen (and women). The last chapter concerns Alaska's last frontier- the remote North Slope, and the men who drill for oil there.

Like all McPhee books, the author seems to fade into the background and let the people and the land tell the story for him. Sometimes the reader feels as if or she, and not McPhee, is standing there on an oil rig.

Alaska is a rich topic, and McPhee is a wonderful writer. A great combination.

Mcphee's Coming into the Country is one of those rare books which provides the reader with incredible insight as well as being a darn good read. If you want to learn about the people, government, attitudes, and other aspects which are prevalent in Alaska, then I would strongly suggest you read this book. The author really did his research by staying in Alaska for a couple of years, and it really paid off. So, if you're thinking about moving to Alaska, pondering about taking a fishing or hunting expedition up North, or you just would like to know some more about the vast and enigmatic 49th state, then Coming into the Country is the book for you. It is surely one of the most interesting books which I have read. Period!

Lots of writers have tried to convey Alaska to non-Alaskans. Few have succeeded. Those who have are the ones who have chosen to illustrate small parts of the larger whole, and selected the right parts. Margaret Murie comes to mind. But 16 years on, Coming Into the Country is still the best.

I own and have read everything McPhee has written. I subscribe to New Yorker mostly for the annual or biennial piece by McPhee. I like the geology series very much, and parts of Birch Bark Canoe still make me laugh out loud, but Country is his best book.

McPhee's many gifts including finding and understanding interesting, compelling people, and writing about them eloquently and non-judgmentally. He uses those people and what they say to convey his larger themes. Stan Gelvin and his dad, Willie Hensley and, of course, the folks in and around Eagle. He somehow wrangled a seat on the state capital relocation committee's helicopter. He somehow charmed the irascible Joe Vogler into candor. I talked with Vogler - who has since been murdered in a gun deal gone bad - about McPhee's interview, and he told me that McPhee took no notes during interviews over a week, and yet "pretty much got it right."

I've lived in Alaska most of my life. I've read the gushy stuff (Michener, for example), the political diatribes (Joe McGinnis, for example), and the gee-whiz tourist fodder. McPhee, instead of trying to paint the whole state, paints a series of miniatures which give you a much accurate glimpse than the writers and hacks who try to "describe" Alaska.

Maybe it's that America's best non-fiction writer brought his special tools and skills to the right opportunities; maybe it's just luck. It all came together in this book. The last bit, his walk down to the river and the growing worry, verging on panic, that this is wilderness, that a bear could be around the next corner, that he is not in control and can never be in control; the eloquence and the message are what makes Alaska. No one has described it better.

If you want to try to understand Alaska, its people, its politics and why I live here, this book is the best place to start. This book is a great writer's greatest book.

John McPhee is a writer who seems able to interest readers in anything that captures his attention. The range of subjects that his books cover is striking and his skill at involving readers in subjects that they might heretofore have thought uninteresting is, in my opinion, unique. This book, recounting a journey through Alaska - as a pretext for broader commentary about Alaska and its relationship with the lower 48 - is an excellent introduction to the state we only think we know. I read this during a long stretch of living and working in Alaska and found it to be the most insightful and interesting book on the subject that I had found. As is true with all of McPhee's books, this one satisfys on many levels, from the clarity of the prose to the fascinating subject matter. Great stuff.

This is an elegant work of factual writing -- not fancy or pretentious, but intricate, charming and strong. John McPhee is a master.

I've read this book 5 times because it fills a huge hole in my heart that has grown wider due to urbanization. My favorite part is the bush and the characters living there. The feeling you get from these people being grounded to the earth literally is so refreshing yet life is hard and living in Alaska is not like looking at a postcard from there. Anyone needing a sense of spiritual uplift should check out this book.

If you already love McPhee's work or are interested in trying him, Coming into the Country will fulfill any expectations. The completed book leaves one with a profound sense of having been there, as well as having recieved a considerable lecture on back-country living. McPhee's ability to wrap lessons, stories, personalities, cultures, habitats and countrysides into an intriguing package makes this book a must.

In the summer of '81, Jane told me, "You have to read this book!" and meant to give it to me for a birthday gift. However, before she had a chance, I had bought the book and was 80 pages into it. Two summers later, I found myself walking along a desolate stretch of the Alcan Highway in Canada's Yukon Territory. I was hitchhiking to Alaska, a place I felt destined to visit having read "Coming into the Country". I never did make it to Eagle (the village described at length by McPhee) but nonetheless remained "in country" until my money ran out five months later. Few books I have read yield such a feel for a place as this one does.

McPhee opens his three part book with "The Encircled River," which doesn't describe a circular river or something simple like that, but rather is a very clever literary trick to illustrate a backpacking trip into the remote Brooks Range. The rest of the book is just as effective. McPhee's portrait of Alaska is highly literate and engrossing

John McPhee is a master at weaving many stories together into a coherent whole. Here he uses these skills to paint a portrait of the varied and often conflicting interests that co-habit today's Alaska. He shifts perspective, examining now the modern-day pioneer who seeks to escape the modern world, and then the representatives of that same world, the government agents and politicians who have their own agenda for America's largest state. This book is wonderfully written in a lucid, literary prose. McPhee puts many other writers of non-fiction, and many of our best literary writers, to shame