McPhee's best-selling account of places where people are locked into contested territories, The Control of Nature examines in detail the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control their natural surroundings.

The three essays which make up this book first appeared in the New Yorker. They describe "efforts to pit human ingenuity against the might of Mother Nature . . . in the lower Mississippi Valley, on the volcanic islands of Iceland, and in the canyons of Los Angeles's San Gabriel mountains. In each case, {McPhee argues}, people risk their lives and incur colossal expense to live in places where geology and weather say they have no business to be." (Libr J)