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,