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Oranges
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.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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About the author
John McPhee
132 books1,851 followersJohn Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 482 reviews
February 10, 2018
Here's what I learned about oranges, or citrus generally:
-- Citrus does not come true from seed. What this means is: If you plant an orange seed, a grapefruit might come up. If you plant a seed of that grapefruit, you might get a bitter lemon. To get oranges, specifically, you have to graft the orange to the rootstock of some other citrus tree. Sweet Florida oranges are grown primarily from bitter orange and sour lemon root.
-- Columbus himself brought the first oranges to the New World.
-- An orange grown in Florida usually has a thin and tightly fitting skin, and it is also heavy with juice. Californians say that if you want to eat a Florida orange you have to get into a bathtub first. California oranges are light in weight and have thick skins that break easily and come off in hunks. The flesh inside is marvelously sweet, and the segments almost separate themselves. In Florida, it is said that you can run over a California orange with a ten-ton truck and not even wet the pavement.
-- A citrus fruit is, botanically, a berry.
-- When you buy a lime to add to your gin and tonic it is generally seedless, which is certainly accommodating for the serious drinker. But it's a problem for pomologists confronted with a virus to an orchard. The most common way to create a virus-free strain of a citrus fruit is to plant a seed, since a parent's virus is not transmitted to its seedlings. So, what to do with the seemingly seedless lime? Two researchers cut up eighteen hundred and eighty-five Persian Limes and found no seeds at all. They next went to a lime concentrate plant and filled up two dump trucks with pulp from the tens of thousands of Persian Limes that had been turned into limeade. Picking through it all by hand, they found two hundred and fifty seeds, and planted them. Up from those lime seeds came sweet oranges trees, bitter orange trees, grapefruit trees, lemon trees, tangerines, limequats, citrons--and two seedlings which proved to be Persian Limes.
-- The modern fruit we recognize as an orange almost surely developed in China.
-- The word "orange" evolved from the Sanskrit. It was orange first in France.
-- In fifteenth-century Breslau, there was an annual orange shoot . . . during which marksmen spent happy hours shooting oranges off one another's heads. In Switzerland, the legend of William Tell was recorded in the same century, and since there seems never to have been a William Tell, it is possible that the Swiss borrowed the idea from the Breslovians, and that the fruit on the head of Tell's trusting son might well have been an orange.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe bought an orange orchard in Florida in 1868. A Southern newspaper expressed satisfaction "that Mrs. Stowe has done this little to repair the world of the evil for which she is responsible in the production of Uncle Tom's Cabin."
-- Many societies believed that the worst thing to happen to an orange tree was the touch of a woman. This superstition was especially persistent in Germany.
-- Oranges appear frequently in the paintings of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance.* Not having seen the Holy Land, they glibly set their Annunciations and Resurrections in Italian villas and on Italian hills. Crusaders, among others, had long since reported that orange trees flourished in Palestine, so, as a kind of hallmark of authenticity, the painters slipped orange trees into masterpiece after masterpiece, remaining ignorant to their deaths that in the time of Christ there were no orange trees in or near the Holy Land.
This book was written in 1966 and does seem a little dated, especially with a large focus on orange concentrate. I don't even know anyone who buys concentrate anymore unless they order it in a chain restaurant for breakfast and it comes gurgling out of one of those machines. I googled my suspicion and, surprisingly, did not get an answer to my specific question. What I got instead was bombarded with links telling me that orange juice is no good for me, with titles like "Why Orange Juice is Slowly Killing You". So, being health-conscious as I am, I will have my vodka straight.
And now you know what I know about oranges.
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
*After a quick look, I didn't find any oranges in the fruit bowls but I did find many, many orange trees, for instance, in Madonna of the Orange Tree:
And, nothing conceals like orange leaves:
-- Citrus does not come true from seed. What this means is: If you plant an orange seed, a grapefruit might come up. If you plant a seed of that grapefruit, you might get a bitter lemon. To get oranges, specifically, you have to graft the orange to the rootstock of some other citrus tree. Sweet Florida oranges are grown primarily from bitter orange and sour lemon root.
-- Columbus himself brought the first oranges to the New World.
-- An orange grown in Florida usually has a thin and tightly fitting skin, and it is also heavy with juice. Californians say that if you want to eat a Florida orange you have to get into a bathtub first. California oranges are light in weight and have thick skins that break easily and come off in hunks. The flesh inside is marvelously sweet, and the segments almost separate themselves. In Florida, it is said that you can run over a California orange with a ten-ton truck and not even wet the pavement.
-- A citrus fruit is, botanically, a berry.
-- When you buy a lime to add to your gin and tonic it is generally seedless, which is certainly accommodating for the serious drinker. But it's a problem for pomologists confronted with a virus to an orchard. The most common way to create a virus-free strain of a citrus fruit is to plant a seed, since a parent's virus is not transmitted to its seedlings. So, what to do with the seemingly seedless lime? Two researchers cut up eighteen hundred and eighty-five Persian Limes and found no seeds at all. They next went to a lime concentrate plant and filled up two dump trucks with pulp from the tens of thousands of Persian Limes that had been turned into limeade. Picking through it all by hand, they found two hundred and fifty seeds, and planted them. Up from those lime seeds came sweet oranges trees, bitter orange trees, grapefruit trees, lemon trees, tangerines, limequats, citrons--and two seedlings which proved to be Persian Limes.
-- The modern fruit we recognize as an orange almost surely developed in China.
-- The word "orange" evolved from the Sanskrit. It was orange first in France.
-- In fifteenth-century Breslau, there was an annual orange shoot . . . during which marksmen spent happy hours shooting oranges off one another's heads. In Switzerland, the legend of William Tell was recorded in the same century, and since there seems never to have been a William Tell, it is possible that the Swiss borrowed the idea from the Breslovians, and that the fruit on the head of Tell's trusting son might well have been an orange.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe bought an orange orchard in Florida in 1868. A Southern newspaper expressed satisfaction "that Mrs. Stowe has done this little to repair the world of the evil for which she is responsible in the production of Uncle Tom's Cabin."
-- Many societies believed that the worst thing to happen to an orange tree was the touch of a woman. This superstition was especially persistent in Germany.
-- Oranges appear frequently in the paintings of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance.* Not having seen the Holy Land, they glibly set their Annunciations and Resurrections in Italian villas and on Italian hills. Crusaders, among others, had long since reported that orange trees flourished in Palestine, so, as a kind of hallmark of authenticity, the painters slipped orange trees into masterpiece after masterpiece, remaining ignorant to their deaths that in the time of Christ there were no orange trees in or near the Holy Land.
This book was written in 1966 and does seem a little dated, especially with a large focus on orange concentrate. I don't even know anyone who buys concentrate anymore unless they order it in a chain restaurant for breakfast and it comes gurgling out of one of those machines. I googled my suspicion and, surprisingly, did not get an answer to my specific question. What I got instead was bombarded with links telling me that orange juice is no good for me, with titles like "Why Orange Juice is Slowly Killing You". So, being health-conscious as I am, I will have my vodka straight.
And now you know what I know about oranges.
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
*After a quick look, I didn't find any oranges in the fruit bowls but I did find many, many orange trees, for instance, in Madonna of the Orange Tree:
And, nothing conceals like orange leaves:
June 27, 2009
You get done with this book and say "I just read an entire book about oranges?!"
January 3, 2009
I came to this book with two misapprehensions. First, I thought it was a new book. Second, I thought it would be about California.
I own a whole string of McPhee books, but lately my enthusiasm for his writing has been in need of a transfusion. A new book seemed the thing to do it. This turned out to be one of his first books. How come I never heard of it until now?
I have lived for the major portion of my life in the middle of the orange groves. (McPhee says Californians speak of orange “orchards.” If so, I’ve been living in a bubble for 70+ years.)
The subject of orange trees takes me back to the smell of orange blossoms on moonlight horseback rides in the San Fernando Valley; to standing in black adobe mud, tending the irrigation ditches in the acre of so of orange grove my family owned; to the smell of the peel when you dig your fingernails into it on a hot summer day; to fresh-squeezed orange juice in a round glass pitcher on the top shelf of the refrigerator; to row after row of glossy green globular trees stretching across the valley in geometric rows; to the warnings to young girls to “stay out of the orange groves” if you didn’t want trouble; to roadside stands today, selling fresh, tart-sweet Navels for $3 a bag; to the sound of Rainbirds chk-chk-chking all night long.
I have to admit that the things I like about McPhee are still there. His ability to dig into something and come up with all kinds of interesting facts you didn’t even know you didn’t know. His personalization of these facts through his interaction with others. His clean, clear prose.
But I was unable to get over my disappointment that California is mentioned only in passing. The book should have been called Florida Oranges.
Oh, and remind me never to drink orange “juice” made from concentrate again. I always knew it tasted funny. Now I know why.
I own a whole string of McPhee books, but lately my enthusiasm for his writing has been in need of a transfusion. A new book seemed the thing to do it. This turned out to be one of his first books. How come I never heard of it until now?
I have lived for the major portion of my life in the middle of the orange groves. (McPhee says Californians speak of orange “orchards.” If so, I’ve been living in a bubble for 70+ years.)
The subject of orange trees takes me back to the smell of orange blossoms on moonlight horseback rides in the San Fernando Valley; to standing in black adobe mud, tending the irrigation ditches in the acre of so of orange grove my family owned; to the smell of the peel when you dig your fingernails into it on a hot summer day; to fresh-squeezed orange juice in a round glass pitcher on the top shelf of the refrigerator; to row after row of glossy green globular trees stretching across the valley in geometric rows; to the warnings to young girls to “stay out of the orange groves” if you didn’t want trouble; to roadside stands today, selling fresh, tart-sweet Navels for $3 a bag; to the sound of Rainbirds chk-chk-chking all night long.
I have to admit that the things I like about McPhee are still there. His ability to dig into something and come up with all kinds of interesting facts you didn’t even know you didn’t know. His personalization of these facts through his interaction with others. His clean, clear prose.
But I was unable to get over my disappointment that California is mentioned only in passing. The book should have been called Florida Oranges.
Oh, and remind me never to drink orange “juice” made from concentrate again. I always knew it tasted funny. Now I know why.
March 2, 2021
One of the small joys of living in Spain is the widespread availability of fresh orange juice. Many bars and cafés are equipped with orange juicing machines; and supermarkets even have them in the fruit section, so that you can squeeze yourself a bottle to drink at home. For my part, this fresh orange juice is incomparably better than juice that has been concentrated, pasteurized, or deaerated, usually sold in American grocery stores. Seeing the number of oranges needed to fill up a single bottle does make you feel rather wasteful, though.
This book is exactly what its title promises: it is all about oranges. Apparently McPhee pitched oranges as the topic of a single New Yorker article, and got so wrapped up in the topic that he decided to write a whole book about it. It is a well-written book. But the most fascinating information could probably have been squeezed into an article after all. Most surprising, for me, was learning that oranges are cultivated via grafts, and not from seeds, as citrus seeds are too unpredictable. (Apparently grapefruit seeds can sprout orange trees, and vice versa.) The history of orange cultivation and consumption was also appreciated. But I could have done without much of McPhee’s own narration of visiting orange country.
It is also worth noting that much of the information in this book (published in 1967) is long outdated. For example, Brazil, China, India, and Mexico have all since surpassed the United States in orange production (we were #1 at the time). And commercial orange juices (like Tropicana) now resemble the fresh stuff more than the concentrate drunk back then. So even as a course for orange fun facts, the book is limited. However, McPhee did inspire in me a ravenous desire to consume oranges in all of their many varieties. I found myself craving citrus every time I read even a page. So in that light, I can deem Oranges a success.
This book is exactly what its title promises: it is all about oranges. Apparently McPhee pitched oranges as the topic of a single New Yorker article, and got so wrapped up in the topic that he decided to write a whole book about it. It is a well-written book. But the most fascinating information could probably have been squeezed into an article after all. Most surprising, for me, was learning that oranges are cultivated via grafts, and not from seeds, as citrus seeds are too unpredictable. (Apparently grapefruit seeds can sprout orange trees, and vice versa.) The history of orange cultivation and consumption was also appreciated. But I could have done without much of McPhee’s own narration of visiting orange country.
It is also worth noting that much of the information in this book (published in 1967) is long outdated. For example, Brazil, China, India, and Mexico have all since surpassed the United States in orange production (we were #1 at the time). And commercial orange juices (like Tropicana) now resemble the fresh stuff more than the concentrate drunk back then. So even as a course for orange fun facts, the book is limited. However, McPhee did inspire in me a ravenous desire to consume oranges in all of their many varieties. I found myself craving citrus every time I read even a page. So in that light, I can deem Oranges a success.
January 8, 2022
This was delightful.
In 1967, John McPhee set out to write a magazine article about oranges. He went to Florida and learned so much interesting stuff that it turned into an entire book.
He interviewed everybody from the orange pickers to the orange barons, he read every book, he went to every orange-related place in the state. All of that info in the hands of a writer like McPhee turns into a great way to spend a day of reading.
McPhee writes this at a transformational time in the orange industry - the rise of concentrate. The story of how concentrate came about and how thoroughly it took over the industry was really interesting.
Since the book is going on sixty years old, one of the best parts was googling to see if some of the predictions McPhee made came true. Example - In 1967 all oranges were still picked the way they had been for centuries - by hand, by someone who had climbed a ladder. But the race was on to build a machine that would do the picking in a faster time, and McPhee described several kinds that were coming to market. Alas, a Google search shows that even today, 96 percent of all Florida oranges are still harvested by hand. None of the machines ever worked.
Great book.
In 1967, John McPhee set out to write a magazine article about oranges. He went to Florida and learned so much interesting stuff that it turned into an entire book.
He interviewed everybody from the orange pickers to the orange barons, he read every book, he went to every orange-related place in the state. All of that info in the hands of a writer like McPhee turns into a great way to spend a day of reading.
McPhee writes this at a transformational time in the orange industry - the rise of concentrate. The story of how concentrate came about and how thoroughly it took over the industry was really interesting.
Since the book is going on sixty years old, one of the best parts was googling to see if some of the predictions McPhee made came true. Example - In 1967 all oranges were still picked the way they had been for centuries - by hand, by someone who had climbed a ladder. But the race was on to build a machine that would do the picking in a faster time, and McPhee described several kinds that were coming to market. Alas, a Google search shows that even today, 96 percent of all Florida oranges are still harvested by hand. None of the machines ever worked.
Great book.
August 4, 2018
He turned around with a look of recognition and said to me, “You come from apple country.” In one sentence, he had defined the dimensions of his own world, the utterly parochial nature of it, its disciplined singleness.
A brief but mildly interesting story of oranges. Their cultivation, their history, and their uses all get examined here.
---------------ANACHRONISMS---------------
This book was written in the 1960s, and it’s interesting to compare then to now. For instance, McPhee notes that for most people, real oranges are “a thing of the past” for the most part. Eating a fresh orange is “old-fashioned.” Most people who consume oranges do so through frozen cans of orange juice concentrate. See, today, I think in a lot of ways those cans of frozen concentrate are themselves old-fashioned, a relic of the 60s-90s. Three times the author is given concentrate labeled “fresh orange juice” in stands in Florida. He asks for fresh orange juice in restaurants in Florida, and none have it.
Today I would guess most people who consume oranges do so through those bags of clementines, like the brands Halo or Cuties. Or through non-concentrated orange juice. Lots of restaurants sell fresh orange juice. And I can’t imagine a Florida orange stand selling concentrate these days. There would be rioting.
There are also other anachronisms, like talking about spraying parathion (a deadly nerve agent used in WW2 warfare) on oranges. “The hazard to the consumer is practically nil.” Lol. Parathion has been banned for use on fruits because it’s a carcinogen.
----------FAV ORANGE FACTS-----------
1. Sweetness. The sweetest oranges come from high up, not low to the ground. Fruit on the outside of the tree is sweeter than fruit closer in to the trunk. South-side oranges are the sweetest, then east and west, and north are the least sweet. The blossom half of the orange is always sweeter than the stem end.
2. Colour. Oranges can be green and still be perfectly ripe. The colour of an orange depends not on ripeness but on temperature. It turns orange because the weather gets cooler, as it does in, say, Florida or California in the winter. In Thailand, by contrast, it never really gets even somewhat cool, and the oranges are green. The ideal nighttime temperature for an orange grove is 40 degrees. That’s why the best oranges in the world are grown on Bermuda, where it typically reaches right around there at night. Hence Andrew Marvell’s poem Bermudas, describing the oranges on that island hanging “like golden lamps in a green night.”
3. Roots. The roots and lower trunk of a citrus tree are usually one fruit, and the upper part, branches, and fruit another entirely (I did know this, as my dad used to grow fruit whose stems he would splice together). For instance, in Florida most orange trees have lemon trunks/roots, and in California most lemon trees have orange roots!
4. Etymology. The word orange comes from the Sanskrit word naranga (the prefix of which meant fragrance), which developed into Neo-Latin “arangium” which became naranja (Spanish), arancia (Italian), and orange (French/English).
5. Uses. Until the 1500s, oranges were grown for ornamental reasons (their “golden orbs” were considered beautiful), fragrance, or as a spice. They weren’t commonly eaten.
Also, oil from orange peels is used to flavor concentrated orange juice to return the flavor of fresh oranges to it. Also, Coca-Cola contains oranges in the form of peel oil.
January 13, 2021
There's nothing like a fresh orange off the tree. You tear off the skin, it's full of juice, aroma, texture, freshness. Nothing feels wrong about a fresh orange. In the future it might become a tourist industry, one of those experienced-based travel adventures.
I read this book years ago as I embarked on planting several varieties in my father's garden. The book was a chance discovery in an opportunity shop. The other chance encounter was finding a small ambitious local nursery owner who wanted to promote fruit like rare or unusual varieties of oranges grafted by an equally enthusiastic and determined propagator. The oranges are still there, my father is not, neither is the nursery or the propagator. Though I sometimes bump into the nursery owner who now a builder. I update him on the size of each year's crop. The five trees keep us in oranges for about four months of the year, eating vast amounts.
The other chance discovery came when I opportunistically bought a box of oranges from a roadside apple seller in central Victoria. I think I missed oranges. So I gave them a try. This was really the spark for the rest of the story. Once we could get a Riverina orange from Mildura or Swan Hill way and it would be sweet and fresh and aromatic. It was the norm. Now (for at least 20 years) they've been musty, old and tasteless, serving the industry that stores them. They often come from the USA too. But they lacked everything except colour. But this box from the side of the highway was magical, everything you'd ever want in an orange. And I tried to track down someone who would send me boxes every season. I couldn't find anyone. Not even the roadside seller could. I missed the taste.
These encounters made me realise that the business of selling oranges is really the business of storing them. Which isn't the same as eating them. So I made it my business to grow them instead. I was furious and couldn't wait to plant them and eat them. I turned my fury into productivity.
These stories intersect only slightly with this book. McPhee is a good writer and journalist. He really gets into the heads of "orange men". He knew the areas where they grew as a child and I could see he missed roadside orange sellers, like I missed the oranges of childhood. Through his writing and observations, you can see the wheels of commerce turning so that in the end, we are stuck with self-serving producers, not really oranges. The product - oranges - has become irrelevant. You could plug any word into the text instead of oranges, say apples, and find a similar story about the degradation of natural products for alternative commercial ends. It all seems pointless. It's tragic, too, unless you have a garden in a zone where they can ripen properly. Melbourne can just manage it. They could be sweeter, and in hot years, they are perfect. But the weather here is variable.
Oh, one last personal point. My father grew up in Greece, on a small cash crop farm. They grew oranges there, including a variety he forgot the name of that came to market early. And they grew the now better known Jaffa variety which we planted in his back yard, thanks to the enthusiastic propagator and nursery owner who wanted to bring it back. It still gives delicious (sometimes very sweet) fruit every year. But that could also be global warming.
I read this book years ago as I embarked on planting several varieties in my father's garden. The book was a chance discovery in an opportunity shop. The other chance encounter was finding a small ambitious local nursery owner who wanted to promote fruit like rare or unusual varieties of oranges grafted by an equally enthusiastic and determined propagator. The oranges are still there, my father is not, neither is the nursery or the propagator. Though I sometimes bump into the nursery owner who now a builder. I update him on the size of each year's crop. The five trees keep us in oranges for about four months of the year, eating vast amounts.
The other chance discovery came when I opportunistically bought a box of oranges from a roadside apple seller in central Victoria. I think I missed oranges. So I gave them a try. This was really the spark for the rest of the story. Once we could get a Riverina orange from Mildura or Swan Hill way and it would be sweet and fresh and aromatic. It was the norm. Now (for at least 20 years) they've been musty, old and tasteless, serving the industry that stores them. They often come from the USA too. But they lacked everything except colour. But this box from the side of the highway was magical, everything you'd ever want in an orange. And I tried to track down someone who would send me boxes every season. I couldn't find anyone. Not even the roadside seller could. I missed the taste.
These encounters made me realise that the business of selling oranges is really the business of storing them. Which isn't the same as eating them. So I made it my business to grow them instead. I was furious and couldn't wait to plant them and eat them. I turned my fury into productivity.
These stories intersect only slightly with this book. McPhee is a good writer and journalist. He really gets into the heads of "orange men". He knew the areas where they grew as a child and I could see he missed roadside orange sellers, like I missed the oranges of childhood. Through his writing and observations, you can see the wheels of commerce turning so that in the end, we are stuck with self-serving producers, not really oranges. The product - oranges - has become irrelevant. You could plug any word into the text instead of oranges, say apples, and find a similar story about the degradation of natural products for alternative commercial ends. It all seems pointless. It's tragic, too, unless you have a garden in a zone where they can ripen properly. Melbourne can just manage it. They could be sweeter, and in hot years, they are perfect. But the weather here is variable.
Oh, one last personal point. My father grew up in Greece, on a small cash crop farm. They grew oranges there, including a variety he forgot the name of that came to market early. And they grew the now better known Jaffa variety which we planted in his back yard, thanks to the enthusiastic propagator and nursery owner who wanted to bring it back. It still gives delicious (sometimes very sweet) fruit every year. But that could also be global warming.
February 18, 2024
A good writer can take just about anything as his subject, no matter how ordinary, and leave you wondering if you’ve ever seen one of its kind before. McPhee took the simple household orange as his subject, intending to produce a one-off article. The result was this slim book - a classic of non-fiction and a marvel of reportage. Among the New Journalists McPhee’s unflashy style, modesty and self-effacement give his work rare distinction.
Also recommend The Heirs of General Practice, La Place De La Concorde Suisse and Looking for A Ship.
Also recommend The Heirs of General Practice, La Place De La Concorde Suisse and Looking for A Ship.
April 27, 2021
After finishing this book, I went right to the grocery store to buy several bags of oranges.
February 9, 2024
Who knew that oranges could be so interesting? One of my favorite fruits, it was fascinating to find out about how they are grown, the yield from one tree, the variation in the sweetness, as well as the impact of weather. I was surprised at how old some of the orange trees are, and that they have been grown in huge groves all over the world. McPhee started to write this as a magazine article, but found the subject to be so deep, he expanded it into a short book. Did I also mention that oranges can be grown from lime or grapefruit seeds and that most Florida trees are grafted onto lemon roots? Crazy!
April 13, 2024
4.5 stars ✨
Oranges. 🍊🫶🏼🧡
Oranges. 🍊🫶🏼🧡
March 24, 2021
This book is hard to describe - it's what it sounds like, a long piece of journalism about the orange industry in Florida in the 1960s. It's interesting in itself and also as a historical artefact (he talks, for instance, about the "National Aeronautical Administration" who own a lot of land in Florida, because it's 1967 and the general public don't call it "NASA" yet). It's also luminously written, in a way you wouldn't expect for a book with this subject matter. I liked it a lot.
May 13, 2024
Another lifetime ago, as an undergrad at UF, I did some marketing research for the FL Dept of Citrus so this was a fun read for me. McPhee mentions that orange trees can be infected by viruses and get “sick” like humans, which is true! When citrus greening was ravaging groves in FL in the mid 2010s, studies were done at UF and the FL Dept of Ag to test the effectiveness of penicillin injections directly into the trees. It had positive results!
February 8, 2025
Happy belated national citrus month! I decided to pick this book up because I have been working with citrus at work and I’m so glad I did! It might be a little dated but it’s fun and informative. I really loved learning about the history of orange cultivation in Florida. I felt like I was there with them, the last of the orange barons, shipping my Indian River oranges up to New York.
March 9, 2025
well… it was certainly about oranges! never was a crazyyy citrus fan, only dabble in oranges from time to time and use orange blossom perfume like any arab gal. now i might know too much about oranges. but im not complaining!
July 10, 2025
Well, I feel like I've learned everything I ever needed or wanted to know about oranges! Thanks Mr McPhee!
This was a very interesting read with every aspect of orange growing covered.
It left me wanting................. a nice glass of fresh orange juice.
Would I read it again, probably not, but off it goes to the library so someone else can learn all about one of our favourite citruses!
This was a very interesting read with every aspect of orange growing covered.
It left me wanting................. a nice glass of fresh orange juice.
Would I read it again, probably not, but off it goes to the library so someone else can learn all about one of our favourite citruses!
September 10, 2022
149 pages about oranges. And I was captivated. Remember when Bubba spoke about shrimp in Forrest Gump? That's basically this book in a nutshell, only it's about oranges. This is a master class on researching a topic deeply and widely and then writing about it. I just got back from the grocery store where I bought oranges and orange juice. It's enticing. And it's educational. I loved this book and if left me with a thirst for more McPhee and some oranges.
April 30, 2019
This reminded me a lot of Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire. It is quintessential McPhee -- lots of details that go along with his motto of giving structure the highest importance when constructing a narrative. I found some parts of the book boring and skipped them. But apart from those, it was mesmerizing. Someone else described in a review how boring and repetitive tasks have a capacity to completely hold your attention as you are doing them, and reading this book indeed does feel that way. On to more McPhee!
August 6, 2016
(3.9/5.0) If you’ve ever devoted more than a few hours to your local public access woodworking program, getting acquainted with the different block planes and varieties of stains and oils, you’ll know how the bracingly dull can still sometimes draw your admiration, even your surprise. In that he’s a pensive, soft spoken bearded man with the patience to resolve challenging and thankless issues of craft, John McPhee is akin to master carpenter Norm Abram. Here, as he does with the rest of his writing, McPhee uses a simple subject to launch into a deep, almost meditative focus before swirling off to more rewarding digressions. Yes, we learn all about citriculture in 1967 (“picking negroes” and carcinogenic chemicals abound). But, in addition to its smooth, ear-pleasing prose, what makes Oranges a model for social history and creative reporting is its forays into storytelling with these long, playful concatenations of historical events triggered by the title fruit’s movement across cultures and time.
From page 2:
The day is started with orange juice in the Colombian Andes, and, to some extent, in Kuwait. Bolivians don’t touch it at breakfast time, but they drink it steadily for the rest of the day. The “play lunch,” or morning tea, that Australian children carry with them to school is usually an orange, peeled spirally halfway down, with the peel replaced around the fruit. The child unwinds the peel and holds the orange as if it were an ice-cream cone. People in Nepal almost never peel oranges, preferring to eat them in cut quarters, the way American athletes do. The sour oranges of Afghanistan customarily appear as seasoning agents on Afghan dinner tables. Squeezed over Afghan food, they cut the grease.
From page 2:
The day is started with orange juice in the Colombian Andes, and, to some extent, in Kuwait. Bolivians don’t touch it at breakfast time, but they drink it steadily for the rest of the day. The “play lunch,” or morning tea, that Australian children carry with them to school is usually an orange, peeled spirally halfway down, with the peel replaced around the fruit. The child unwinds the peel and holds the orange as if it were an ice-cream cone. People in Nepal almost never peel oranges, preferring to eat them in cut quarters, the way American athletes do. The sour oranges of Afghanistan customarily appear as seasoning agents on Afghan dinner tables. Squeezed over Afghan food, they cut the grease.
August 22, 2021
2.5 Stars!
“Ground fruit-the orange that one can reach and pick from the ground-is not as sweet as fruit that grows high on the tree. Outside fruit is sweeter than inside fruit. Oranges grown on the south side of a tree are sweeter than oranges on the east or west sides, and oranges grown on the north side are the least sweet of the lot.”
This is possibly the most interesting thing I learned in this short account, also did you know that for years California was the leading orange state until Florida surpassed them in 1942. So there you go. Originally published away back in the mid-1960s, it’s fair to say this has dated somewhat.
There are moments when McPhee pulls out some really enjoyable historical facts, and some of the people he meets are mildly interesting, but to be fair at no point does this really show any life or conviction about it, too often it feels too half-hearted in voice and disjointed in structure and overall this wasn’t really a great read.
October 3, 2022
It was definitely about oranges! 😀
September 2, 2025
love the start and then it just talked about concentrate too long.
August 2, 2025
So interesting! And like all of McPhee’s books, deliciously written
January 21, 2019
In 2017, I got burned by Bananas. Years prior, at B&N, I'd found a book exclusively about the history of the fruit. Such a pointed focus fascinated me. Surely I would discover many interesting things! The text, however, was written like an extended high school essay. There was no flow. There was repetitive info. What data was given was dry and unmoving. So I had reservations about picking up another slim volume, this time about oranges.
What a difference an author makes, though! I've never read McPhee prior, but he is well regarded, that I know. That regard is likely due to how he is able to make such a seemingly simple topic read like a story. Parts are a travelogue of Florida orange country, other parts are history, or biology. He chronicles the impressive feat of concentrate, yet clearly yearns for a time where fresh juice reigned supreme. He profiles the work and the workers. When he talks about the scent of the air around orange processing plants, it's almost enough to desire a trip to Florida, and when he catalogues all the different oranges, the green skinned and the orange skinned, the seedless and seeded, the known and lesser known, sweeter and tarter... well, I've been craving juice all week, let's put it that way.
What a difference an author makes, though! I've never read McPhee prior, but he is well regarded, that I know. That regard is likely due to how he is able to make such a seemingly simple topic read like a story. Parts are a travelogue of Florida orange country, other parts are history, or biology. He chronicles the impressive feat of concentrate, yet clearly yearns for a time where fresh juice reigned supreme. He profiles the work and the workers. When he talks about the scent of the air around orange processing plants, it's almost enough to desire a trip to Florida, and when he catalogues all the different oranges, the green skinned and the orange skinned, the seedless and seeded, the known and lesser known, sweeter and tarter... well, I've been craving juice all week, let's put it that way.
January 3, 2017
John McPhee's Oranges is just what it sounds like: a book about oranges. The pages are filled with everything the average person would ever wish to know about the fruit, but it doesn't read like a textbook; on the contrary, it sweeps you up and doesn't set you back down until the end (which, I admit, was incredibly abrupt).
When I finished Oranges, I had a large dose of the familiar feeling that comes at the end of a really good book. If you're here on Goodreads, you probably know what I'm talking about: that sense of loss, and a sudden regret that you devoured your book at the speed you did. To have a really good book, in my opinion, it needs to flow, and McPhee understood that. Somehow, he made a book about fruit read like a fantasy novel.
When I finished Oranges, I had a large dose of the familiar feeling that comes at the end of a really good book. If you're here on Goodreads, you probably know what I'm talking about: that sense of loss, and a sudden regret that you devoured your book at the speed you did. To have a really good book, in my opinion, it needs to flow, and McPhee understood that. Somehow, he made a book about fruit read like a fantasy novel.
April 3, 2018
Interesting if outdated read (published in 1967). I will say that it ended incredibly abruptly, but I definitely want to check out some more of McPhee's work. Excellent narrative nonfic.
January 6, 2022
Oranges...everything you might want to know about this fruit, or at least everything known in 1967...it's all in this little nonfiction classic.
August 19, 2025
“too bad most of the interesting people are dead”
I came across this book in my favorite book store in dc, it had one of the employee rec cards under it and it was in a section i didn’t usual make it to without having already picked 3/4 books out but i gave it a chance and i’m so glad i did.
John Mcphee writes a quippy non fiction story about, you guessed it, oranges. the fruit. how they are utilized in cultures across the world in food, tradition and decor. how different variants grow and became staples of towns and countries and the “orange men” who trailblazed it. There was a huge focus towards the end of the book specifically in florida and the boom of the east coast “orange” rush.
Centuries old trees and orchards still produce oranges and the concentrate industry we know today and thanks to john we get to see a glimpse of what not only the successful grove owners are up to but the workers. my personal favorite, snake man, whom we all unfortunately never got to meet.
Outside of the story topic, this was so fun to read, captivating with his writing style. you can tell he went to a diner in florida and just chatted for hours with these people and really cared about their lives and stories. it was always hard to hear the injustice of women even when it came to fruit. When a winter frost destroyed some trees and the blame was placed on the “orange wenches” working the orchards it seems satirical to read and he plays into how ridiculous that dated thought really was.
Looking forward to reading more john mcphee soon.
I came across this book in my favorite book store in dc, it had one of the employee rec cards under it and it was in a section i didn’t usual make it to without having already picked 3/4 books out but i gave it a chance and i’m so glad i did.
John Mcphee writes a quippy non fiction story about, you guessed it, oranges. the fruit. how they are utilized in cultures across the world in food, tradition and decor. how different variants grow and became staples of towns and countries and the “orange men” who trailblazed it. There was a huge focus towards the end of the book specifically in florida and the boom of the east coast “orange” rush.
Centuries old trees and orchards still produce oranges and the concentrate industry we know today and thanks to john we get to see a glimpse of what not only the successful grove owners are up to but the workers. my personal favorite, snake man, whom we all unfortunately never got to meet.
Outside of the story topic, this was so fun to read, captivating with his writing style. you can tell he went to a diner in florida and just chatted for hours with these people and really cared about their lives and stories. it was always hard to hear the injustice of women even when it came to fruit. When a winter frost destroyed some trees and the blame was placed on the “orange wenches” working the orchards it seems satirical to read and he plays into how ridiculous that dated thought really was.
Looking forward to reading more john mcphee soon.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 30, 2021
It's about oranges, alright. McPhee travels to Florida in the early 1960s and learns about the history of Florida, the role of oranges there, and the science behind much of growing oranges and producing orange juice. It was more interesting than I thought it would be. McPhee is just an excellent writer and the book is at its best when he is sharing his stories about the people he met in Florida. There are a lot of weird facts in this book. I had no idea that most citrus trees can bear multiple different types of fruit. And the orange trees are grown in Florida, and most places it seems, are the combination of two different types of plants. For example, they use rootstock of lemon trees and then bud tie orange variety plants to the rootstock to grow an orange tree. Similar to how grapevines are commonly cultivated. And, according to medieval growers in Italy, it was common knowledge that women were not allowed near orange trees because their presence would kill the trees.
December 13, 2024
i didn’t NEED to know that much about oranges and their history, but this book sorta felt like the equivalent of listening to my partner infodump on her most recent hyperfixation (minus the sexism and racism from the 60s) and for that i appreciated it.
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