Giver without recipient

Some former recipients are sorely missed, this time of year especially. When I see the perfect book for someone who's no longer with us, I'm sad. I see that Uncommon Carriers (John McPhee) was included in the NYT list of 100 notable books, so I'm reminded all over again. I've read the published excerpts as they've appeared (all in the New Yorker, I think) and have wished that the person who'd be most interested in everything the book contains were here to talk about it. (In the little blurb linked, although the cover shows the coal train, there's no mention of this segment in the summary.) Another book that would have gone to this missing recipient would have been Nicholas Lemann's book about Reconstruction.