Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
Dec 2007 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
4.5star
14 reviews
Ebook
320
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
“One of the distinguished gardening books of our time,” from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma (USA Today).
Chosen by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 75 greatest books ever written about gardening
After 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, from the renowned author of The Botany of Desire, In Defense of Food, and other bestsellers, is “as delicious a meditation on one man’s relationship with the Earth as any you are likely to come upon” (The New York Times Book Review).
“Usually when Americans have wanted to explore their relationship to nature they’ve gone to the wilderness, or the woods. Michael Pollan went to the garden instead . . . and he’s returned with a quirky and pleasing book.” —Annie Dillard
“A joy to read.” —Los Angeles Times
Chosen by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 75 greatest books ever written about gardening
After 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, from the renowned author of The Botany of Desire, In Defense of Food, and other bestsellers, is “as delicious a meditation on one man’s relationship with the Earth as any you are likely to come upon” (The New York Times Book Review).
“Usually when Americans have wanted to explore their relationship to nature they’ve gone to the wilderness, or the woods. Michael Pollan went to the garden instead . . . and he’s returned with a quirky and pleasing book.” —Annie Dillard
“A joy to read.” —Los Angeles Times
Ratings and reviews
4.5
14 reviews
Paul Demetre
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May 8, 2022
In this book Pollan waxes philisophisical about gardening after buying a former farm and trying to decide what type of landscape he wants to create. Always an interesting author he is one who informs and, if nothing else, causes you to think about things in a different way. He doesn't always change my mind but at least makes me ponder. In this book he laments the grass lawn, something that is both beautful and practical to me, but he at least causes me to stake and defend my own postion on the matter.
John A Perazzo
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June 10, 2023
Immensely readable.
About the author
Michael Pollan is the author of The Botany of Desire and the prize-winning A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder. In 1991, he received the QPB New Visions prize for Second Nature, which was also chosen by the American Horticultural Society as one of the seventy-five greatest books ever written about gardening. He is currently the editor of Modern Library’s gardening series and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.
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