Publication

2007-04-03 - Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Language

English

Word Count

62,000 words, Guess

Page Count

248 pages

Physical Format

Paperback

Identifiers

  • ISBN-100865477396
  • ISBN-139780865477391
  • LibraryThing761609
  • Goodreads54967
  • OCLC Control Number162132642
and 2 more
  • Better World Books9780865477391
  • Open LibraryOL8317354M

Description

McPhee's books are about real people in real places. Over the past eight years, McPhee has spent considerable time in the company of people who work in freight transportation. This is his sketchbook of them and of his journeys with them. He rides from Atlanta to Tacoma alongside Don Ainsworth, owner and operator of a sixty-five-foot, eighteen-wheel chemical tanker carrying hazmats. He attends ship-handling school on a pond in the foothills of the French Alps, where, for a tuition of $15,000 a week, skippers of the largest ocean ships refine their capabilities in twenty-foot scale models. He goes up the Illinois River on a "towboat" pushing a triple string of barges, the overall vessel being "a good deal longer than the Titanic." And he travels by canoe up the canal-and-lock commercial waterways traveled by Henry David Thoreau and his brother, John, in a homemade skiff in 1839.--From publisher description.

Subjects

Other Editions

  • Uncommon CarriersPaperbackFarrar, Straus and Giroux2007-04-03

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