Oranges

| 4.29 | 2,430 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Daniel Pink, Barry Estabrook, Catalina Penciu, and 3 others. See all reviews

Ranked #37 in Orange, Ranked #41 in Agriculture — see more rankings.

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... more
Buy on Amazon

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Oranges from the world's leading experts.

Daniel Pink AuthorRecommends this book

Barry Estabrook Oranges is a model for a certain type of journalism. Big food companies do not want you to know how your food is produced and who produces it. They want you to just think about it as something that arrives in your supermarket already wrapped up. This book is a model for me. Every day on his way to work McPhee passed through the train station in New York City and there was this place where you could go and they had a bin full of oranges and a machine and they would squeeze you a glass of orange juice while you waited. (Source)

Catalina Penciu McPhee also wrote a beautiful book called Oranges, about the citrus groves in California; how oranges are grown, taken care of, transformed into the famous juice we all know and love. It's a piece written for the New Yorker in the 60s, but it's still as much alive today. (Source)

Rankings by Category

Oranges is ranked in the following categories:

Similar Books

If you like Oranges, check out these similar top-rated books:

Learn: What makes Shortform summaries the best in the world?

Learn More