Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal. What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.

In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.” A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity. How to Change Your Mind What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence Although much of the food on the industrial-organic chain is more recognizable and traceable than fast food items derived from the purely industrial chain, what goes on behind the scenes is still often harmful to the environment. For example, Big Organic sometimes requires even more fossil fuels than industrial farms to combat the inefficiency of producing a huge amount of food without using chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Eating a dinner prepared from Whole Foods-bought ingredients, Pollan weighs the evidence that organic food is more nutritious and flavorful against the cost of flying his organic asparagus into San Francisco from Argentina in January. Pollan concludes that “industrial organic” does betray the intentions behind “organic”—it’s environmentally unsustainable, pricey, and yet it offers potential benefits in health and taste. This Is Your Mind on Plants From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants -- and the equally powerful taboos.

Climax: Of the four meals chronicled by Pollan, the fourth and final one is the most climactic, since it is the product of the most direct and local food chain possible. The author and New York Times Magazine contributor is, as Newsweek asserts, “an uncommonly graceful explainer of natural science,” for his investigative stories about food, agriculture, and the environment. His book The Omnivore's Dilemma was named one of the top ten nonfiction titles of 2006.An eater's manifesto ... [Pollan's] cause is just, his thinking is clear, and his writing is compelling. Be careful of your dinner!" Few writers approach their subjects with the rigor, passion and perspective that's typical of Michael Pollan. Whereas most humans think we are Darwin's most accomplished species, Pollan convincingly argues that plants — even our own front lawns — have evolved to use us as much as we use them. Outstanding ... a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our current eating habits."

Pollan visits two farmers in Iowa who grow corn as part of the industrial system, using every tool and pesticide they can to grow as much corn as possible on their land. It is impossible to trace a particular ear of corn to the resulting meal, since corn from farms throughout the middle of the country is all industrially processed together, and three-fifths of that corn will become cattle feed on factory farms. Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues. The dilemma—what to have for dinner when you are a creature with an open-ended appetite—leads Pollan (Journalism/Berkeley; The Botany of Desire, 2001, etc.) to a fascinating examination of the myriad connections along the principal food chains that lead from earth to dinner table. As the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley, Pollan is cultivating the next generation of green reporters. What others sayTeaching Tools. The Omnivore’s Dilemma was also adapted into a popular young readers’ edition designed to make his analysis of the food system accessible to younger people. The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same. Revelations about how the way we eat affects the world we live in, presented with wit and elegance.