I read this a few days after "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and began it the day after picking up "In Defense of Food". I loved the former, thought the latI read this a few days after "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and began it the day after picking up "In Defense of Food". I loved the former, thought the latter was thin and a resaying of what he'd already said. This book was a beautiful book, though not the tome that O.D was, it's beautifully written. It also sets the stage nicely for O.D.
Here, using apples (with their amazing capacity to evolve based on seeds that don't grow true to the parent), tuplips, cannabis and potatoes Pollan sets out plainly the case that Richard Attenborough made several years before: that both humans and the foods they eat co-evolve. In the final chapter, he begins to describe the connundrum of monoculture that he deals a death-blow to in O.D (in that anyone who reads it will understand for once and for all what a death-blow to humanity monoculture is).
Pollan's writing is wonderful, he opens up this subject like sucessive leaves on a head of lettuce, peeling back leaf after leaf and exposing more andPollan's writing is wonderful, he opens up this subject like sucessive leaves on a head of lettuce, peeling back leaf after leaf and exposing more and more of what's inside. I first read his treatise in the New York Times that appears in the beginning of the book back in 2001, and didn't realize that it was the same author.
I'll be thinking about this book, its ideas and revelations, for a long, long time.