McPherson’s strength is in narrative journalism, and he’s always present in these essays, making their exploration of science, history, and environmental devastation feel personal, not clinical. Each is definitively about something (this is not memoir couched in place-writing), but McPherson is your very companionable, and very curious guide. It’s his interest that drives the story.
Though many of these have been previously published, the collection moves as a whole, with each new exploration pushing us further to question America’s history, its sense of itself, and its future Edward worked in magazines in NY for many years, and has a strikingly broad array of contacts. His savvy about how media works, and his personal connection to many of the people we’d pitch his book to, should make getting coverage for these essays much easier.
Pop culture weaves its way through the essays, and McPherson’s ability to look sideways at stories we think we already know, to integrate who shot JFK with who shot JR in a meaningful, revealing way, makes the book timely, a pleasure to read, and a vehicle for reconsidering our past, and what that means for our future.