John McPhee has the ability to infect the reader with his enthusiasm for whatever subject he writes about. For moments at a time you will want to work at a farmers' market, shoot the rapids in northern Maine, but especially hang out with Otto eating mussels, scallops, and sweetmeats, even if you'd much rather the veal chop. So generating electricity for New Jersey on a seaborne nuclear power station or watching pinball players isn't quite up there with the perfect leek, McPhee still makes it worth reading about. And easy too. ( )

I have been a fan of John McPhee's writing for over thirty years, but I don't know how to rate this book. The article "The Atlantic Generating Station," about a proposal to build a floating nucler power plant off the New Jersey coast in the 1970s, is flawed by a significant omission: while the article goes into significant detail about the studies of fish and wildlife and ocean currents and myriad other factors subcontracted by the nuclear industry, there are only two slight references to the subject of radioactivity, and absolutely no mention, repeat, no mention, of even the subject of issues surrounding the handling and disposal of nuclear waste. These issues were certainly widely debated before McPhee wrote his article, and given McPhee's stature as a journalist, I can only assume that the omission was deliberate and that this article was written as a puff piece for the nuclear industry. I don't require John McPhee to agree with me about the dangers posed by nuclear power and nuclear waste, and I would have welcomed a thoughtful, intelligent discussion of the issues, the kind of extended exploration of all facets of a subject that usually delights me about McPhee's treatment of a theme. McPhee is no stranger to nuclear subjects (his book on Ted Taylor, "The Curve of Binding Energy," showed him technically aware but politically naive), so I can only assume the omission of any mention of nuclear waste was not accidental. I feel betrayed by a trusted friend. ( )