Describes the journey of the Stella Lykes, an American merchant ship, on a 42-day run through the Panama Canal and down the Pacific Coast of South America.

In Greenville, New Hampshire, a small town in the southern part of the state, Henri Vaillancourt makes birch-bark canoes in the same manner and with the same tools that the Indians used. The Survival of the Bark Canoe is the story of this ancient craft and of a 150-mile trip through the Maine woods in those graceful survivors of a prehistoric technology. It is a book squarely in the tradition of one written by the first tourist in these woods, Henry...

Looking back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, and reflecting on projects he never got around to - people to profile, regions he meant to portray, a literary legend presents a collection of vignettes and a "reminiscent montage" from a writing life.

This second volume of The John McPhee Reader includes material from his eleven books published since 1975, including Coming into the Country, Looking for a Ship, The Control of Nature, and the four books on geology gathering under the title Annals of the Former World: Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California.