Oranges (Penguin Modern Classics) Paperback - 2000

Name: Oranges (Penguin Modern Classics)
Price: 6.82 GBP
Availability: InStock
Author: McPhee, John
ISBN: 9780141182032

by John McPhee

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About this book

A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a short magazine article about oranges and orange juice, but the author kept encountering so much irresistible information that he eventually found that he had in fact written a book. It contains sketches of orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers, orange packers, early settlers on Florida's Indian River, the first orange barons, modern concentrate makers, and a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida who may be the last of the individual orange barons. McPhee's astonishing book has an almost narrative progression, is immensely readable, and is frequently amusing. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles, because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too—with elements in it that range from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a custom of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.

First line

THE custom of drinking orange juice with breakfast is not very widespread, taking the world as a whole, and it is thought by many peoples to be a distinctly American habit.

First Edition Identification

Heinmann published a First UK Edition, First Printing in 1967, London. The edition is characterized by red cloth boards with gold lettering on the spine.

Farrar Straus & Giroux published a First US Edition hardcover in 1967, New York.