Oranges [Paperback]

A classic of reportage,Orangeswas first conceived as a short magazine article about oranges and orange juice, but the author kept encountering so much irresistible information that he eventually found that he had in fact written a book. It contains sketches of orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers, orange packers, early settlers on Florida's Indian River, the first orange barons, modern concentrate makers, and a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida who may be the last of the individual orange barons. McPhee's astonishing book has an almost narrative progression, is immensely readable, and is frequently amusing. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles, because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, toowith elements in it that range from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a custom of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.

1. Oranges
2. Orange Men
3. Citrus Sinensis
4. Orangeries
5. Indian River
6. Degrees Brix
7. Orange Baron

Fascinating. A sterling example of what a fresh point of view, a clear style, a sense of humor and diligent investigation can do to reveal the inherent interest in something as taken-for-granted as your morning orange juice. Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal

It is a delicious book, in a word, and more absorbing than many a novel. Roderick Cook, Harper's

John McPheewas born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began atTimemagazine and led to his long association withThe New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book,A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has writtelÃÂ