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Book Summary and Reviews of The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma

A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

  • Published:
  • Apr 2006, 464 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century.

Today, as America and much of the western world confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance. The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is bestselling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book.....Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister." - PW.
""What should you eat? Michael Pollan addresses that fundamental question with great wit and intelligence, looking at the social, ethical, and environmental impact of four different meals. Eating well, he finds, can be a pleasurable way to change the world." - Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

This information about The Omnivore's Dilemma was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Michael Pollan Author Biography

Alia Malley

Michael Pollan is the author of several books, including Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder, The Botany of Desire (which received the Borders Original Voices Award for the best nonfiction work of 2001 and was recognized as a best book of the year by the American Booksellers Association and Amazon), The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, and Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. A longtime contributing writer to The New York Times Michael Pollan, recently featured on Netflix in the four-part series Cooked, is the author of seven previous books, including Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all New York Times bestsellers. A ...

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Link to Michael Pollan's Website

Other books by Michael Pollan at BookBrowse
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  • In Defense of Food jacket

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