McPhee, John (Angus) (1931– )

US writer. He worked as a television playwright for Robert Montgomery Presents (1955–57) and as an associate editor for Time magazine (1957–64). In 1964 he became a staff writer for the New Yorker, he also taught journalism at Princeton University (from 1975). His non-fiction books, acclaimed for their cool precision, were usually based on articles written for the New Yorker; they cover a wide variety of subjects – everything from oranges to ecology, from canoemakers to Alaska. In later years he pursued an interest in geology through a series of books beginning with Basin and Range (1981). McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He studied at Princeton, gaining his BA in 1953, and at Cambridge University, England (1953–54).