(cross-posted)

McPhee, John


Uncommon Carriers

2006; 248 pages


Fascinating adventures about the people who work in tranportation. McPhee, a writer for the
New Yorker spends time following the lives of some of those who drive trucks, handle
packages at UPS, pilot large ocean ships, and work on towboat and rain crews. McPhee also
spends a week recreating the trip that Henry David Thoreau wrote about in A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

A great read for fans of "behind the scenes" books like Studs Terkel's Working, Word Magazines's "Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium" and Debra Ginsberg's "Waiting: True Confessions of a Waitress."