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Basin and Range
NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, (1981). The first of McPhee's books on geology, which eventually led to his winning the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for Annals of the Former World, which included the text of this book plus four others. The text of Basin and Range book was initially published in The New Yorker, and this copy is inscribed by McPhee to long-time New Yorker fact checker Sara Lippincott: "For Sara Lippincott - I will forever be grateful to you for the amount of yourself you put into this piece of work, and I can think of no better way to describe what you have done than to borrow a phrase from something you said in November: '...you mean, when it moves, it doesn't rattle.' Yes, that's it - not to mention the pleasure of the daily dialogue. Thank you, Sara./ John." In 2009, McPhee wrote a piece for The New Yorker about Lippincott and the magazine's fact checkers, titled, "Checkpoints: Fact-checkers do it a tick at a time." On page 51 of this book, Lippincott is apparently still at work: a check mark appears in the margin. A near fine copy in a very good, spine-faded dust jacket with one small chip and another edge tear. In addition to the inscription, signed in full by McPhee on the title page. [#033053] SOLD

All books are first printings of first editions or first American editions unless otherwise noted.

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