This Sunday I read Michael Pollan’s book, The Botany of Desire. The book is a natural history of man and four plants: the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato. Now that I think of it, this might be the only life-science book I’ve ever for recreation, but there are certainly worse places to begin.
Michael Pollan is not only a writer, but a gardener. Throughout the four sections he draws on history, biography, genetics, economics, biotechnology, and culture at large in a delightfully consilient manner. The high botanical drama of man’s Apollonian quest for order versus his yielding to Dionysian revelry is interwoven with Pollan’s own personal experience.
While it is not a dedicated study of eco-issues, the work is nicely book-ended with thoughts on the man-environment interaction–the plants we domesticate, and the ways we are subtly domesticated in turn. I particularly like the discussion of “wildness” and “wilderness,” and some provoking thoughts on intoxication. I thought the apple section was the most interesting, but Pollan reaches his most filligreed and gushing moments in the chapter on the tulip. The potato section was a bit bland, but perhaps that is to be expected. Overall, the book is an interesting romp.
Mark Larson 
Highly recommend The Omnivore’s Dilemma (more recent book by the same author)…especially the first section about how processed food is made in this country
Kevin, The Omnivore’s Dilemma is definitely on my reading list.
[…] Like some other consilient books I’ve dabbled in, Surowiecki draws from a bunch of academic and popular work, and uses it to neatly package his ideas for human consumption. In his favor, I really like that he doesn’t stretch his research too far. The main idea seems more richly documented and better sculpted than in books like Blink and The Tipping Point. As an added bonus, his writing is more free from chummy background stories–i.e. not all research needs multi-paragraph introductions. Instead, we get a nice solid edifice of ideas–thank you, James. […]
[…] to say he’s a bad writer. He isn’t. (I did enjoy The Botany of Desire.) This one comes up a bit thin and repetitive. Maybe he wrote it to turn a buck. Maybe just because […]