City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

John McPhee (1931-)
The Pine Barrens
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968

As an unabashed New Jerseyan, my pick is John McPhee’s
The Pine Barrens, one of the finest books on the Garden
State. The Library’s 1968 first edition also has a cover
that invites the reader in, showcasing the deep green pine
forest against a bright blue sky, one of the region’s
ubiquitous turtles (maybe an Eastern mud turtle?), and
a groovy beetle of the mechanical kind, against a motif
of those namesake trees.

Carolyn Waters (staff)