SAVE THE DATE: Join author Noel Rubinton ‘77 for a discussion of his new book: Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee.

This free event will be hosted by the Princeton Club, at a lovely private space near Grosvenor Square.

John McPhee has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1965 and has written more than thirty acclaimed books that began on the magazine’s pages. But few readers know or fully appreciate the true breadth of his writing. Looking for a Story is a complete reader’s guide to McPhee’s vast published work, documenting much rarely seen or connected with McPhee, including remarkable early writing for Time magazine published without his name.

In chronicling McPhee’s career where he broke ground applying devices long associated with fiction to the literature of fact, Noel Rubinton gives insights into McPhee’s techniques, choice of subjects, and research methods, shedding light on how McPhee turns complicated subjects like geology into compelling stories. Beyond detailing more than seventy years of McPhee’s writing, Rubinton recounts McPhee’s half century as a Princeton University writing professor, a little known part of his legacy. McPhee inspired generations of students who wrote hundreds of books of their own, also catalogued here.