My 10 Favorite Books: Michael Pollan

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For his bookshop installation, One Grand, the editor Aaron Hicklin asked people to name the 10 books they’d take with them if they were marooned on a desert island. The next in the series is Michael Pollan, author of many titles including “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.” He shares his picks exclusively with T. For its bracing prose as much as anything else. I’ve been arguing with Thoreau for most of my career. When he abandoned his beanfield because he couldn’t stand making “invidious distinctions” between his beans and the weeds, he gave up on agriculture and opted for wilderness — a tremendous mistake in my view. Sentence by sentence, some of the most stimulating thoughts anywhere. “Home Economics: Fourteen Essays/The Gift of Good Land/The Unsettling of America,” Wendell Berry I’ve learned more from Berry than anyone else about how best to engage with nature, and how to write a sturdy and pleasing English sentence. Taught me how to look at a landscape and see not just nature but history as well. In retrospect, this beautifully written and hilarious narrative made me a journalist — or at least, one who put himself in the story in order to see it fresh and build a narrative. The most original observer of American politics in the second half of the 20th century. ... And not just because there are so many great barbecue scenes. (Henry Fielding called “The Odyssey” “Homer’s wonderful book about eating,” and wasn’t too far off.) But there’s lots to learn about story structure too, and why it’s often a good idea to begin in the middle.