Customer Reviews

The Founding Fish

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John McPhee has written numerous pieces for _The New Yorker_ and over a score of books on such subjects as oranges, canoes, and geology. His wide range of interests now centers on an object of personal obsession; in _The Founding Fish_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) he tells us about his own passion for fishing for shad. As you might expect, he can't help but tell us a lot more, about history, ecology, and human oddities. If you don't know about shad, and even if you don't know about fishing, and don't care to know about it, you won't feel alienated away from these pages, which contain McPhee's fine prose and wry humor. (For instance, he is surprised to find a snake in his net: "I lack the sense of companionship that some people seem to have with snakes.") Shad is worth knowing about, it turns out, and so is McPhee, who has seldom put himself as a character in his own books.

Of course, there is much advice about fishing for shad, which seem to be a particularly elusive fish. McPhee quotes extensively from his fishing diaries, and starts his book with a funny description of an epic battle with a shad on the Delaware River starts. McPhee has seventy feet of six-pound test line "suddenly pulled by a great deal more than the current." The battle goes on for pages and pages, eventually ending in the netting of a 4 3/4 pound shad. A fighting fish, to be sure. Or a clumsy angler. Shad is not an endangered species, but of course they have been affected by the humans changing their waters. Beside the problem of pollution, there are thousands of dams on rivers that used to present only milder natural obstacles for the returning fish. Some of the dams are, surprisingly, coming down, and McPhee takes us to a dam-removing ceremony. As the title implies, shad have played a role in American history. George Washington seined for shad on the Potomac. He didn't eat them; only one shad bone has turned up in the excavation of his garbage pit at Mount Vernon (and McPhee can't help an interesting digression upon "archaeozoology"). His slaves got them, and he used shad as a fertilizer. Despite the legend, his men at Valley Forge were not saved from starvation by a providential, unseasonal run of shad up the Schuylkill River. Thoreau worried about shad in their thousands meeting a new commercial dam, and wrote the lament, "Poor shad! where is thy redress?" Thoreau advised the fish, "Keep a stiff fin and stem all the tides thou mayst meet." Words to live by.

Once again, McPhee has picked an unlikely subject and made everything about it vivid, interesting, and important. If you fish, you will love this book. If you don't fish, here is a book to give you an idea about why intelligent fishermen go about their often frustrating hobby with such evident pleasure. _The Founding Fish_ is a delightful small encyclopedia on everything connected with shad.

John McPhee, "a registered curmudgeon", was fishing for shad on the Delaware River one afternoon when he felt a tug. Nearly three hours later, amidst a serious debate over what was on the end of the line, a concerned wife's inquiry forwarded by a policeman, and cheers from interested spectators, McPhee pulled from the river a 4 - 3/4 pound roe shad. Clearly not a record-setter, nor an exotic species - the debate suggested bass, sturgeon and even tarpon. What prompted McPhee to relate this event in opening a lengthy account of what, to some, remains a mediocre animal? Surely, John McPhee, who has written of continental movement and extended vistas, must have a compelling reason to deal with such a mundane topic.

McPhee's reputation as a writer should need no introduction. However, if you are unacquainted with his work, you can start here with confidence. He deftly presents a melange of scientific information, "folk wisdom", history and personal experience. As with his work on geology, he entices researchers, fishermen, guides and legislators to provide him their views, which he relates with sympathy and clarity. Throughout this narrative, his own experiences are told with wit and compassion. Fishermen are great whingers, but McPhee brings a new level of sensitivity to his personal accounts. He knows there's a god when a nearby fisherman nets six fish while his hook remains empty - only a god could permit such arbitrary antics in nature.

The research and folk tales centre on a particular form of fish. Anadromous ["running up"] fish, among which salmon are the most famous, can move from an ocean environment up fresh water streams to spawn. This talent requires bizarre body chemistry, bearing immense costs. Salmon die after spawning, partly because they don't feed on the upstream run. Shad, too, remain hungry heading "home" to breed, but some shad return to the sea after mating. In some regions they may make three or four trips in a lifetime. McPhee, accompanied by fishermen and researchers, traces the history and physiology of the American shad. Other piscine species are touched on, including, of all things, a hammerhead shark. The shad, however, keeps centre stage. Once scorned as "just shad", chiefly due to its bony nature, many now acclaim its flavour when it reaches the table - hence the species name "Alosa sapidissima" - "most savoury".

Books about sports are a major industry. They suffer a common fault - they're universally inwardly focussed. Baseball fans don't read about cross-country skiing. Golfers don't read about ice hockey. And fishing? There's divided opinion about fishing among sportsmen. Golfers, baseball fans, or hockey buffs often view fishermen with kindly disdain. Up at ungodly hours, thrashing through damp woods to take up stations at a bug-infested stream or foggy lake. Not something reasonable or civilised people should do. McPhee's experiences, brought to light by his superb prose, bring fresh breadth of vision to the world of fishermen and fish. Always an unmatchable read, this latest publication of McPhee must join his other works on your shelves. You may not be a John McPhee fan when you encounter this book, but you will be when you finish it. Then pass it along to your children who will find riches and insights he provides. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

"It has not been long since the Florida peninsula was under water. Covered with sand, it is a limestone platform - like the Bahamas platform, the Yucatan platform. Now that it is up in the air, its topography and drainage patterns are somewhat bizarre. For example, it has an east-west divide and a north-south divide. The shorter one crosses the peninsula at the latitude of Tampa Bay. The longer divide, running down the axis of the peninsula, is known locally as the Ridge. Its high domains - the Apennines of Florida - rise to an altitude of two hundred and forty feet. For a hundred miles, oranges grow on the Ridge in a broad continuous ribbon."

If one had, by some fiat, to restrict all of John McPhee's writing to one paragraph, this excerpt from THE FOUNDING FISH would be a good representative example, something of a core sample of years of excellent prose. The reference to the Florida orange crop in the last sentence neatly encapsulates ORANGES, McPhee's epic 1967 writing on the classical, biological, economic and social history of oranges, written in that startlingly crisp and literate prose that is his hallmark. The discussion of Floridian geology is evocative of his masterpiece, ANNALS OF THE FORMER WORLD, a four-volume exploration of geology and the plate tectonics revolution that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1999. McPhee has written the authoritative texts on a dizzying array of topics, as varied as Alaska (COMING INTO THE COUNTRY), the merchant marine (LOOKING FOR A SHIP), and Bill Bradley (A SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE).

THE FOUNDING FISH continues in this tradition. It is the definitive work on the American shad. There are, therefore, only two groups of readers who will be delighted by it; those who have heard of the American shad, and those who have not. The latter group would include, say, Southerners raised on catfish, those from the Western trout streams, and the ice fishermen of the Northern Lakes. The shad, like the salmon, is an ocean fish that swims into freshwater rivers to spawn, and is therefore common only on the East Coast and the West Coast.

Any further discussion of shad, and their ways, and their habits, and their lifecycle, and their savory taste would here be superfluous, if not downright rude. McPhee --- no slouch himself as a shad fisherman --- knows shad and their ways. John McPhee knows shad the way that Stephen Hawking knows physics, the way that Billy Graham knows the Bible, the way that Nolan Ryan knows the fastball. What he doesn't know, he has learned; the book is filled with discussions, consultations, and fishing trips with people for whom shad is a scientific study, a magnificent obsession, a way of life.

The book is as wide-ranging as the shad itself. McPhee takes us on expeditions to the Delaware River, the heartland of shad fishing, to the furthest extremes of the fish's range in the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia to the St. John's River in Florida. Along the way, the reader is treated to in-depth discussions of the shad's habits, its love life, its place in American history, and its place in American cuisine. (McPhee likes his shad fillets broiled, with lemon pepper.)

If THE FOUNDING FISH has a flaw, it is that it is not built around a central compelling personality. McPhee describes shad fishermen as unfailingly polite, and the people he talks to throughout the book are certainly polite, but they are not the sort of people you remember. Compared to the colorful geologists that play such an important role in ANNALS OF THE FORMER WORLD, the shad experts in THE FOUNDING FATHER are unassuming and quiet, almost anonymous.

THE FOUNDING FISH is longer than other of McPhee's books. Partly this is because it is so obviously a labor of love. Partly, also, it is because there is so much information crammed into its pages --- perhaps too much information --- especially in the chapter on fish dissection. But readers seeking clear exposition in crystalline prose about a topic on which they know nothing ---or everything --- will find THE FOUNDING FISH to be an exquisite, compelling experience.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds

John McPhee can make _anything_ interesting. Oranges? Yep. Birchbark canoes? You bet. Well, he's done it again with a fascinating look at the American shad. This is no trendy fish, but don't let that fool you. There is more material here than in any two books written about trout or bass.

Perhaps the most captivating aspect of the book is McPhee's ability to interweave history, science, and personal narrative. I was amazed to learn what an important role the shad has played in the history of the United States, and what an equally important role Americans have had in shaping the history of the shad. But most satisfying is what we learn about McPhee himself, both his shad fishing exploits and misadventures. With a dry sense of humor and mastery of understatement, the author kept me chuckling throughout.

I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys history, science, fishing--or who appreciates reading remarkably tight and engaging prose. McPhee is a master writer, and we all stand to learn a great deal from him.

The Founding Fish does what only a few books do well, take an obscure topic, look at it from every angle and still maintain the reader's interest from cover to cover. Who'd've thought that there was a whole book waiting to be written about the shad and people who care about it?

McPhee's style makes for easy reading and his eye for detail and for the interesting approach is fun. The book will carry you off to sleep for several nights, or keep you entertained all the way across the country at 35,000ft.

I just had a few miscellaneous comments on this book.

I enjoy McPhee's books although I rarely have the time to read them through cover to cover. But I'll often dip into them and enjoy his insights into the people and things he writes about. McPhee has a fine ability to evoke what is special about a place, the people who live there, and what they do, and this book is no different. With his usual low-key but engaging and conversational style, McPhee regales us with accounts of the people who fish for shad. Before reading this book, I had no idea there was a particular, well, subculture of shad fisherman who were distinct from, say striped bass or salmon fisherman or others. In one of the funnier sections in the book, McPhee and a couple of other shad fisherman friends are discussing the difference between shad and striped bass fisherman. They agree that shad fisherman are polite and more cultured, whereas the striper types are "the wrestling crowd," "have missing teeth," and are "rude." However, they are also, as one of them says, "kick-ass fisherman." (I don't know how true it is, but as I know nothing of fishing culture I will give McPhee the benefit of the doubt).

The book is replete with accounts of the present day as well as the historical importance of shad. Washington's troops feasted on a large shad catch during the shad's up river swim to spawn one season, which Washington knew about, and where and when to get the best catch. What they couldn't eat at the time, they salted and stored away for future use. In fact, McPhee states that Washington himself was a shad fisherman.

I had one minor criticism. One of the fisherman who is also a fish biologist, Kynard, says that fish don't see the way we do, and that they see by light using up a photochemical by the name of rhodopsin. However, this is no different from the way all vertebrates see, including humans. All vertebrates have rhodopsin in their retinal cells and the amount of rhodopsin activity is proportional to the amount of light. Where fish differ from us is in having many more cones, the basis of color vision. We have only three cones, red, green, and blue, but fish have 6 or 7, and reptiles and amphibians have 4 or 5. Hence, they likely see even more colors than we do and have better vision there.

Kynard makes one interesting observation, however, which is that he thinks that shad have trouble going up river under very bright light conditions since their eyes become depleted of rhodopsin. For example, they have trouble with whitewater which could be because it reflects a lot of light, and it confuses the shad, whereas salmon and other fish seem to have no trouble. I thought this was an interesting speculation. I suppose this is possible, although rhodopsin is recycled at a furious rate in the retina.

Anyway, I apologize for waxing so nerdy, but I was trained as a sensory neurophysiolgist once. Overall, I enjoyed the book and it's another example of how McPhee can bring his journalistic expertise and talents to the enjoyable exploration of what might seem to be a very narrow or specialized field, but which in McPhee's case, can become a microcosm for life itself, the conversations ranging from the shad specific to marriage to work and life in general, often looked at from the perspective of the home-spun wisdom and common sense of the intrepid shad fisherman. Of course there's a huge amount of fascinating info about shad fishing here, and much of it is specific to shad. For example, I learned more about how to make shad lures and darts than I probably ever wanted to know. :-) But it was interesting and enjoyable to read about nevertheless.

There's a review on the cover of McPhee's "Oranges" that says (and I am probably paraphrasing heavily), "You put down this book, and say to yourself, my God, I've just read 220 pages about oranges..." And that, in a nutshell, is what McPhee is all about. His writing is so exellent, his reporting so good, that he can find the story worth telling in just about any subject. McPhee has, for many year, defined great non-fiction writing, and indeed it's hard to read other fine writers like Tracy Kidder without seeing the mark of McPhee in their style.

I have a shelf in one of my larger bookcase that contains nothing but McPhee- books on geography, the Swiss Army, the Merchant Marine, Alaska, the headmaster of a private school.. and yes, oranges. And every one is an absolutely riveting read, whatever the topic. "Founding Fish" is no exception. As he does in many of his books, McPhee deftly mixes history, contemporary reporting, profiles and personal narrative in a way that's both seamless and endlessly fascinating.

If you haven't read McPhee, and you enjoy great reporting, you owe it to yourself to buy this volume- or, for that matter, any book by McPhee.

First, a confession: I feel somewhat like a husband whose been disloyal, if only in his heart, to a faithful and altogether wonderful wife, just because he's
grown bored by the very routine of their relationship. I've been reading John McPhee since I was a kid and he was writing about Princeton and
Knickerbocker hero Bill Bradley. In those nearly forty years I can't recall a single uninteresting piece he's written and many of them are marvelous. But
when this book came over the transom was my reaction: great, a new John McPhee!? No. To my shame, it was: oh geez, 350 more routinely excellent pages
from McPhee. Are there so many good authors out there that one can afford to be blasé about one of the best? Would I rather a book that might quite possibly
stink, written by someone else, just for the uncertainty involved in reading it? How callow.

In my own defense though, this time out Mr. McPhee is writing about the American shad. I'm as big a fan of fishing literature as anyone, but who does not
feel, when they see a new fishing book nowadays, the way C.S. Lewis felt one night at a meeting of the Inklings, when J.R.R. Tolkien prepared to read to the
assembled from his latest work: "Oh, no! Not another [freaking] elf!"? In your heart of hearts, don't you say to yourself: "Oh, no! Not another freaking fishing book!"?

All the more reason to feel like a fool now, having read the book, when Mr. McPhee has demonstrated once again that he's one of the finest non-fiction writers in our history and that there's still plenty
of life in the fishing genre. Mr. McPhee may not quite have invented the technique of taking a topic and looking at it in detail from top to bottom--the shelves are packed with books that have
borrowed the technique, books with names like: Salt; Cod; Tobacco; and Coal--but he is the master. And so, in this book, we get the entire natural history of the fish and no one will finish the last page
wishing he knew more about the shad. However, there are two segments that stand out and definitively lift the work out of the ordinary. It opens with that most hackneyed of scenes, an epic battle to
land the big one, but in the author's capable hands it somehow seems new and fresh. It goes on for page after page, until the cops have even shown up--at his wife's request, to make sure he's not
dead--until the climax can't possibly be worthy of the fight, but still he manages to make it satisfying.

The other highlight surprises because it's so politically incorrect. The final chapter takes on not only PETA and other animal rights groups but well-intentioned fishermen everywhere to challenge the
notion of catch and release. Honestly and guiltlessly discussing the inevitable damage that just landing a fish does to the animal, he leaves little doubt that however good releasing them may make
fishermen and activists feel about themselves, it does little to help fish or fisheries.

This ability to make the old seem fresh and to look at the seemingly sacred from a fresh perspective, make Mr. McPhee, even in his twenty-sixth book, a writer of currency and pertinence. I repent of
my sin and I shan't ever doubt him again.

I have never fished, never even wetted a hook, but I just finished an entire book about shad fishing! Only John McPhee, finally hitting his stride again after two rather disappointing outings could do it.
His secret is telling a story through people, in this case through icthyologists, commercial shad fishermen, shad dart mavens, historians, and his own personal experience.
I particularly liked his interlude with the Bay of Fundy brush weir fisherman. As with many McPhee expositions, I felt that by the time I was done reading his chapter, I could have gone to the Bay of Fundy and built a brush weir myself.
And I can only hope that someday I will be able to write such direct yet luminous prose.

Joh McPhee creates a masterpiece here writing a book that follows the oldest fishery in the United States. Long before George Washington first cast his seine for American shad, native Americans no doubt enjoyed these tasty fish that obligingly swam up the rivers each spring. McPhee takes us on a journey up and down the East Coast of North America in search of this ancient fish. Along the way we talk to guides, local commercial anglers, noted biologists, and expert historians to learn all about American shad and the impact this species has had on society from the earliest colonial days up until the present. We trace the life history of the shad as life begins in the nursery waters of the great eastern rivers in North America. We follow the young as they head to the ocean at the end of their first summer. We learn about the life of shad in the oceans, and we stand with the anglers, hip-deep in the waters of the shad's natal rivers, as they wait to cast to the mature adults struggling upstream to begin the cycle again.

This is a wonderful book, full of lively stories and interesting information. It combines fisheries science, sociology, history, and angling advice in a broad colorful tapestry that transcends normal "fish books." This is a book that will appeal to people from all walks of life, because it approaches the subject from so many angles. In a way, to know the American shad and its story is to know America. As the founding fathers struggled to hammer out a new country and defend it from strife both within and without, the founding fish- the American shad- and the lucrative fisheries that built up around it were inextricably interwoven with everyday life. Although we came close to destroying these wonderful fish through habitat detsruction, the American shad stands tall today as a wonderful testament to the value of nature and the ability of America to recover an animal that was so vital to the young country. Read this book. I think you will treasure it.