Coming into the Country (1977) Signed First Edition Reference

Coming into the Country (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977) is McPhee’s most ambitious single work — a three-part portrait of Alaska that moves from the Brooks Range wilderness to the political battles over the state capital’s location to the lives of settlers and prospectors in Eagle, a tiny community on the Yukon River. The book captures Alaska at the pivotal moment when the trans-Alaska pipeline was transforming the state, and it remains the single best book written about the place.

First Edition Identification

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1977
• 438 pages — McPhee’s longest book
• First edition stated on copyright page

Signed Copy Market Values

• Signed first in jacket: $150–$350
• Unsigned first in jacket: $40–$80

Why This Is a McPhee Trophy

Coming into the Country is where McPhee’s methods — the patient accumulation of observed detail, the structural ingenuity, the prose that makes landscape almost a character — achieve their fullest expression. For many readers, this is the McPhee book. The length (unusual for him) reflects the subject’s grandeur. A signed first is the centerpiece of any McPhee collection.