To read it later: Los Angeles Against The Mountains

Berkeley, Monday, March 30, 2026 9:07 PM

Today, I briefly and superficially learned about the great non-fiction writer and geology Professor John McPhee.

While this post is for my future reference. Here a few notes to read first.

I love the title, for what I think it was a debris flow event in Los Angeles. He wrote for the New Yorker a two-part article titled: Los Angeles Against the Mountains. This was in 1988. I will know of course better once I read it. The cartoon depicted below is also great. The mountains in the background should be the San Gabriel Mountains.

Thanks to Roberta Rood for posting or finding and making it available a copy of the first part of the article in her blog. By the way, what a cool blog name of her: Books To The Ceiling.

Click to access la-against-the-mountains.pdf

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1988/09/26/los-angeles-against-the-mountains-i

This might be a good starting point to read some of John McPhee work. He wrote about 5 to 7 articles for the New Yorker between 1988 to 2018 in the series The Control of Nature. Links are in the references. Here those works:

McPhee, John. 1987. Atchafalaya. The New Yorker. February 16, 1987

McPhee, John. 1988. Cooling The Lava. Parts I and II. The New Yorker.

McPhee, John. 1988. Los Angeles and The Mountains. Parts I and II The New Yorker.

McPhee, John. 1999. Farewell to the Nineteenth Century. The New Yorker.

McPhee, John. 2018. Direct Eye Contact. The New Yorker.

Some things to explore. Those are interesting titles.

References:

Los Angeles Against The Mountains. John McPhee. The New Yorker. 1988

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/the-control-of-nature?page=2

Blog:

Reading California: John McPhee’s “Los Angeles Against the Mountains”