They're in the River

John McPhee turns his meticulous eye to the American shad — a fish that shaped the nation's rivers, economy, and culture for centuries. He traces its remarkable biology and spawning migrations up the eastern seaboard, its role in colonial American diet, and its near-disappearance due to overfishing and dam construction. Along the way, he recovers the history: this is the fish that fed George Washington's troops at Valley Forge, that sustained Indigenous peoples long before European contact.

With characteristic precision and dry humor, McPhee profiles the fishermen, biologists, and conservationists still devoted to the shad's restoration, weaving natural history with American history in a narrative that moves between scientific detail and human story. For readers of his broader body of work — or anyone drawn to environmental restoration, river ecology, and the overlooked corners of American life — this is McPhee at his most quietly essential.