John McPhee Chronicles Human Attempts to Control Nature.

Writer John McPhee. He's a classic example of a "writer's writer," one whose style is endlessly studied and mimicked, and whose effortlessness in moving between subjects as diverse as Alaskan geology, oranges, and birch-bark canoes is the envy of every freelancer. He's worked at The New Yorker magazine since the late 60s and is one of its most popular contributors.

Assistant Managing Editor of The New York Times, Allan Siegal. He oversees usage and style at the Times. A revised and expanded edition of his “The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage” (Times Books) has just been published.

Columnist and commentator Murray Kempton. The New Yorker says he's "surely among the greatest of all living newspapermen" . . . "the one true original in the business." For years he wrote a column for the old New York Post. Now he writes for New York Newsday and The New York Review of Books. At 76, he bicycles around Manhattan in his elegant attire to gather material for his columns on the City's "rebels, losers and rascals." His latest book is a collection of his newspaper pieces.