Oranges

By John McPhee

A classic of reportage, Oranges was 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, too—with 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Apr 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780374708702

John McPhee

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The 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 written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Reviews for Oranges

[hagelstein_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The subject is oranges, “once the fruit of the gods,” before they finally became “a fruit of the community.” Originally published in 1967, Oranges was a New Yorker article extended into this elegant, entertaining history. The passages about the now diminished Florida orange industry (“nearly fifty million orange trees”) are historical in nature. The state’s yield is a fraction of what it was at the time due to freezes, overdevelopment and disease.John McPhee, always a compelling writer, traces the history of oranges in culture and art throughout the world. The fruit holds a special significance in Florida, where many of us remember when oranges, and citrus in general, were responsible for a large part of the state’s charm.

[klburnside · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Originally intended to be a magazine story, Oranges is a short book all about oranges. McPhee meets with growers, pickers, scientists, and others to bring the reader a fascinating picture of oranges and the industries surrounding them.

I liked the beginning and the end of the book the best. The middle dealt mostly with the cultural history of the orange and the history of orange groves in Florida, neither of which were particularly interesting to me. Other parts of the book were much more fascinating. McPhee explores the history and production of orange juice concentrate, growing and grafting techniques, and the expansion of the orange industry. At one point, one of McPhee's interviewee comments, "We are growing chemicals now, not oranges," as he relates that many of the oranges were being used to make artificial flavorings, cattle feed, and chemicals used in fighting forest fires.

The book was written in 1967, so the information was quite dated. I'm sure the modern food industry has found many more ways to manipulate the orange and its juice and make use of its chemical components. I would love to read an updated version. Parts of the book were definitely four star material, but I had to settle with three.

[carriewuj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Short and sweet. Not sure I knew what I was getting when I picked this up - but it was excellent nonfiction on the history of oranges and orange products, especially in the US. Published in 1967, the book is dated by now in terms of technology used to produce and harvest oranges, as well as the all male leadership in the orange industry. My actual book copy was that old, and it was fun to have an anachronism in form and content in my hands. I love a deeper look at average objects and this account fulfilled that in McPhee's capable prose. Oranges have their origin in southeast Asia and spread with the Age of Exploration, coming our to our hemisphere with Columbus and to our country with Ponce DeLeon. They have been symbols of fertility, prosperity and royalty, have forestalled wars and cemented treaties. They have been "mistaken" as apples in various writings, due to the lack of imagination in the Latin language. Those who study them are pomologists and there is much to study from their breeding to the best way to extract their juices and how best to use all the by-products. While now we can get them anywhere, any time, I can remember in childhood the big box of FL oranges that would arrive as a Christmas gift and it was like sunshine arriving on the doorstep. The FL agriculture scene which is mostly oranges and citrus and cattle takes up the vast interior of the state, above the Everglades and away from the coasts. According to this book, it is full of characters and transplants and millions of acres of orange groves which are their own mini-worlds. A great combo of sweeping historical arcs, fun facts, and science, this "tapestry of oranges" was a worthwhile read.

[brian.mcgovney · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Yesterday, after dinner, Tina and I split an orange. This was a delicacy made new by my perusal of the John McPhee treatise Oranges this weekend. As with all McPhee books, this is filled with fun and fascinating facts that weave together into a compelling story. For instance:

* An orange is always sweeter on the blossom end. I tested this rule of thumb, and it held quite well for the ochre segments we ate (over the sink, of course) in the kitchen.
* The best oranges on a tree are grown high up, on the south-facing side.
* Navel oranges have a thick skin (as do California-grown oranges) compared to the Valencia orange (or the Florida-grown ones).
* Far from the corporate behemoth I pictured it as, Sunkist is the largest agricultural cooperative in the world.
* Frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ, for fans of the film Trading Places) is not simply concentrated orange juice. It's fresh OJ that's been vaccuum-extracted to within an inch of its life, resulting in a tepid acid-sugar syrup with no particular orange character. Packers then add a small amount of fresh OJ and d-limonene (orange peel oil) to give it the flavor we've come to know and love as "orange juice." No WONDER freshly-squeezed OJ tastes so different from Minute Maid.

[mrminjares · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Like a long encyclopedic entry this book tells you everything there is to know about oranges...where they come from, how they settled in the US, the history of the Florida orange growers, how to grow the best oranges..etc, etc. I want to eat more varieties of oranges and grow my own tree now.

[dichosa_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written in the '70's, things have changed in Florida and in the orange market, but McPhee's writing is timeless. This book, like many of his works, is a slender volume. I was able to read it in just a couple afternoons. With his lively descriptions and 'first person' style, make it a smooth read and you learn a thing or two to boot!