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Second Nature Review

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Who could have predicted that a young Michael Pollan writing about gardening would become a leading advocate for responsible agriculture and one of the country’s biggest-selling writers? Just about anyone who read him then, is my guess. Pollan shows in this gem of a book what a terrific and layered writer he is.

For all the fantastic writing, the book, however, is uneven. Many of the chapters were published as magazine articles before the book came out, and it shows. The organization of the book by seasons is forced and the individual chapters in each section don’t always belong. Pollan makes a good effort of tying it all together with memories of his grandfather’s garden (and the characters of the grandfather and his garden in the beginning narrative are worth the price of admission), but in the end the individual narratives don’t hold together as well as later Pollan books manage to do.

But don’t let this stop you. Push through some of the more boring chapters (or skip them altogether, since the one advantage of the choppy nature of the book is that each chapter stands alone well), and you’ll be rewarded with the absolute perfection of others. My favorite, the chapter about seed catalogs, is at once observational journalism, literary criticism, and writing master class.

If you came to this book the same way I did (which is to say, after reading Pollan’s more recent work, including his magnum opus “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”), I think you’ll find enjoyment in seeing his earlier achievement as a writer, a science journalist, and a modern environmentalist. Don’t miss it.

Second Nature Overview

Eight years ago, Harper’s Magazine editor Michael Pollan bought an old Connecticut dairy farm. He planted a garden and attempted to follow Thoreau’s example: do not impose your will upon the wilderness, the woodchucks, or the weeds. That ethic did not, of course, work. But neither did pesticides or firebombing the woodchuck burrow. So Michael Pollan began to think about the troubled borders between nature and contemporary life.

The result is a funny, profound, and beautifully written book in the finest tradition of American nature writing. It inspires thoughts on the war of the roses; sex and class conflict in the garden; virtuous composting; the American lawn; seed catalogs, and the politics of planting a tree. A blend of meditation, autobiography, and social history, Second Nature is ultimately a modern Walden: a true classic for our time.

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