A charming, breezy collection of reminiscences about projects that didn’t make it, ideas that never got fully baked, research never written up, either because the subject died or because McPhee, who was born in 1931, lost interest along the way.

There are plenty of snippets here that will make readers wish McPhee had indeed delved deeper into particular topics.

What Tabula Rasa really is about is John McPhee, now 92, and, along with his last couple of books, it is as close to an autobiography as we will get.

There are simply too many compelling and witty pieces in Volume 1 for a reviewer to recount. McPhee chooses his words with the care Proust did, only McPhee is always far more informative and funnier than Proust.

Of detritus Tabula Rasa makes diamonds. Its 50 chapters are McPhee books in miniature, with all the wit, panache, and exactitude we find in his long-form work..

Some of the best writing in this collection could be considered memoir — from McPhee’s high school job as a billy club- and flashlight-toting night watchman at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, to finding one-sentence and three-page autobiographies written by his late parents among their possessions.

The cogency, potency, and temperance of his voice never waver, no matter where he meanders. One of the strengths of this collection is that McPhee maintains both momentum and interest—including, not least of all, his own. A gem from an exemplar of narrative nonfiction..