Product Description 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.
Anti-Wilderness, Cleverly DisguisedJuly 21, 2010 John Stevens 1 out of 7 found this review helpful
Pollan is a very bright and clever writer and all his books are entertaining and well-researched. But his point of view is all humanist and as such is part of the same old agenda as even the worse earth-raping capitalists. Indeed, his later books and essays advocate killing animals, "getting over" the "idea" of wilderness, and not bothering to preserve nature but rather to just give up and let humans overrun everything. He is a good marketer, has a huge ego, and he tells humans (especially us Hummer-loving Americans) what we want to hear, but people like him are part of the erudite, seemingly sensitive propagandists (such as Bill McKibben) who do not love earth as much as they love humans, thus missing the fact that humans are embarked on a massive earth-killing mission that combines capitalism, ecocide and ultimately suicide.
Absolutely wonderfulJuly 9, 2010 Laura Giese(Indianapolis, IN USA) I am a gardener. I have to start with this statement, because I relate so very well to Pollan in this regard that I am not able to step outside myself and make a guess if it's a book for every homeowner or more for those who are interested in gardening. If you have even a passing interest in horticulture, landscaping, or possibly american history/philosophy I would highly recommend this book. It felt so good to read about someone else's journey through idealism to pragmatism in their own yard, as so much of it reflects my own experiences. There are oodles of quotes and thoughts from other garden writers, many of which I plan to follow up on and read as well. I learned a lot from Second Nature and enjoyed every minute of it.
Entertaining enough but shy of his later effortsMay 27, 2010 R. Burnette(Grafton, NH) I have followed Pollan's more recent works and have loved them. I prefer audiobooks and have found his reader, Scott Brick, to be brilliant in those more recent efforts. However, he has chosen to read this book himself and he starts out well enough but eventually he becomes more monotoned and seemingly disinterested in the subject matter (which he had apparently written more than a decade before his audio recording). He has some wonderful insights and observations but he tends to be way too shallow on the kinds of details he would likely have provided had he written the book recently. Technical recording quality is excellent.
Second Nature - (A gardener's delight)April 3, 2010 Lady Bug(Dallas reader) I am still reading this book; it's one to be savored instead of gobbled up in one sitting. I love the author's discovery of gardening and his awareness of the political side of growing plants--something I'd never noticed. He's spot on about the conflict between lawns and shrubbery, evidenced in my own household. I want to get rid of our lawn; my husband will not hear of it.
Certainly not a how-to bookMarch 12, 2010 Cowboy Baker(Lander, Wyo) 1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I find Second Nature to be primarily a treatise on urban
landscaping for homeowners--what to do with the land on which
your house sits. A very philosophical approach to gardening.
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