The Pine Barrens

The Pine Barrens, John McPhee's classic work of narrative non-fiction, is an exploration of the vast, sparsely populated pine forest that occupies the heart of New Jersey, one of the most densely populated states in America.

Despite lying within easy reach of major cities, the Pine Barrens comprise a wilderness of pines, oaks and cedars, threaded with cranberry bogs and wild blueberries, almost as large as the Grand Canyon.

McPhee travels through the region talking to the "Pineys", its long-standing, often self-sufficient residents, including a man who navigates the dense woods purely from memory.

Written at a moment when development pressures threatened to transform the Pine Barrens forever, the book is both a portrait of an overlooked landscape and a study of the people whose way of life is bound up with it.