Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

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.

This is simply a wonderful book. As a gardener, I often recognized myself in the author's reflections, although I'd not taken the time to articulate many of his thoughtful meanderings around his gardening experiences. And what a thoughtful trip it is and how much FUN it often is! In the Weeds section, when one of his final thoughts, directed at Thoreau, in Walden Pond, who couldn't bear to eliminate weeds and wild critters from his bean patch: is "Fine. Starve." I laughed out loud. Highly readable bits of history on our attitudes toward trees, use of the land and ornamental gardening both enlighten and amuse. I can't wait to tak this book to my master gardener group to share it with my friends. This would have been a PERFECT gift for me if one of my family had seen it before I did.

I read this book for a college course, "Religion, Ethics, and the Environment." Most of the books were (as the course title suggests) very heavy texts...yawn. However, when assignments from Pollan's book came up, I would laugh out loud while reading. My classmates & I would discuss the book at any given opportunity, and the bookstore sold twice as many copies as there were students in the class, because we recommended it to everyone. How many philosophy books can you say that about?
Pollan makes his philosophical points with vivid stories from his childhood on Long Island and his adult experiences in his garden. His garden-centered view of nature provides an excellent counterpoint to most environmental philosophy, which has been written from a preservationist's point of view.

I read this book after stumbling across, and very much enjoying, the Botany of Desire by the same author. Pollan's perspective on nature, culture, and the garden's place in both is fresh and extremely well written. This book is both challenging and fun; anyone with even the slightest interest in the sciences will like reading and thinking about the ideas he gives.

Pollan's ability to describe people and gardens is worthy of a weekly newspaper column next to Dave Barry. I keep his books on my shelves for re-reading on a leisurely day.

SECOND NATURE by Michael Pollen is a collection of esays that are not always well-connected or well-written. Mr. Pollen has won awards for his essays and some of them are quite good, however, the book is uneven. I think many of the readers who provided glowing reviews must have concentrated on the front half of the book which is autobiographical and hysterically funny.
NATURE contains several distinct sections Pollan calls "Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter" but his essays do not "follow" the gardening year. For example, "Fall", the third section of the book is about the destruction of Cathedral Pines, a nature preserve owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy in Connecticut. Mr. Pollan thinks the local town folk (he is one) should have decided "what to do" in the aftermath of the storm which toppled the old pine trees that had inhabited the Cathedral Pines since the days of the American Revolution. Pollan would have done better to call this section "Why I think I understand Mother Nature better than the Nature Conservancy." And, maybe he does, but his essay is angry, and his anger affects his argument. After reading his essay, I am not persuaded the Nature Conservancy failed since Pollan fails to provide their side of the argument which might have been quite reasonable.
The best part of Pollan's book contains his autobiographical essays about life with his father who refused to mow the lawn much to the consternation of his upscale neighbors; life with his maternal grandfather who made mega-bucks as a professional gardener and green grocer; and Pollan's own attempts to take up gardening as an avocation. Anyone who has ever gardened will enjoy these sections because as all good gardeners know, most folks learn through trial and error. Mr. Pollen says there are few "Green Thumbs" i.e. Green thumbs exist, but they are rare.
The book is laced with historical factoids--an eclectic assortment of information Mr. Pollan gleaned from many articles and books by garden/nature and other writers including James Frazier, Thoreau, Emerson, Alexander Pope, Henry Mitchell, Eleanor Perenyi, Allen Lacey, Elizabeth Lawrence, and Katherine White who wrote garden essays for the New Yorker magazine. Mr. Pollen is advertised on the jacket of his book as an "Executive Editor" of Harper's magazine, and as I read his book, I formed an image of him snipping bits and pieces from the various articles and books he edited over time and sticking them together, i.e. a cut and paste job. Mr. Pollan's book needed a better editor, and I haven't read such an entertaining, provocative and frustrating book in a long time.

The author sure did his research! I was learning a new concept every page. It's amazing how involved and enriched the flora culture is. I loved the theories on lawn grass, I was right there with him thinking the same things every day in the not so distant past when I watered, cared for and cut my grass. Overall excellent book, I recommend this to anyone even remotely interested in planting, gardening or who even likes flowers. I think I found my mother's day gift!

Originally purchased this book for a college course on Outdoor Ethics. I never did end up reading it, but I'm looking to start a garden next year and this really help me get fired up about gardening. The book helped me to get a prospective about my place in nature and how I want to go about gardening. Loved it.

Michael Pollan's writing is full of metaphors. This book about nature as a human construct was enjoyable to read. I found some parts frustrating because I like the romantic idea of nature even if it is just a human construct. But overall I would recommend this book for a quick read.

I loved his previously written books, but this one felt forced. It was as though it was just time to write another book but there wasn't much to say. I made it through over half of the book, but then decided life is too short to continue!

From the publication of "The Botany of Desire" I have been a big fan of Michael Pollan's writing.
This world needs his message on what and how we respect plants and what we eat and what we should eat...

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.

I really liked the book but Michael Pollan has improved as a writer since writing this therefore only the four stars. In this book he tends to ramble at the end of the chapters, his later books do not have this tendency.

Felt like a task to listen to... the writer seems very arrogant and narrow minded. I did not get through the book. It was a book assigned to a book club and most people in the group felt negatively about this book.