Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
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.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Pollan, executive editor of Harper's and self-proclaimed amateur gardener, has written a book that is by turns charming and annoying, insightful and shallow, droll and banal. His collection of a dozen essays arranged by season is based on his experiences over a seven-year period in his Connecticut garden, along with vignettes from garden history. Unfortunately, Pollan's text is characterized by dubious and unsupported generalities, self-conscious humor, and extended, labored metaphors, and his lack of gardening authority dooms the book to superficiality. Experienced gardeners and devotees of garden literature will find little here that is original. Only for comprehensive gardening collections.-- Richard Shotwell, Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
This isn't so much a how-to on gardening as a how-to on thinking about gardening. It follows the course of the natural year, from spring through winter, as Pollard, an editor at Harper's , chronicles his growth as a gardener in Connecticut's rocky Housatonic Valley. Starting out as a ``child of Thoreau,'' Pollard soon realized that society's concept of culture as the enemy of nature would get him a bumper crop of weeds and well-fed woodchucks but no vegetables to eat. Far more serviceable materially and philosophically, he now finds, is the metaphor of a garden, where nature and culture form a harmonious whole. Pollard finds ample time for musing on how his own tasks fit in with the overall scheme of existence; thus, there are chapters titled ``Compost and Its Moral Imperatives'' and ``The Idea of a Garden.'' Although serious in import, the writing is never ponderous; Pollard's wit flashes throughout, and particularly in anecdotes about his youth: one memorable incident has his father mowing his initials in the front yard after being reproached by a suburban neighbor about his overgrown lawn. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Book Review
From the executive editor of Harper's magazine, an important and profoundly original book that is a radical departure from the standard gardening text. Juxtaposing two currents of human response to nature--the ""market ethic,"" in which manipulation and chemistry are used regardless of consequence, and the ""wilderness ethic,"" in which the environment is allowed to take its ""natural"" course--Pollan develops an alternative ""gardener's ethic."" Pollan begins by contrasting the gardening methods of his grandfather, who re-presents the market ethic, with those of his father, who leans more toward the wilderness ethic. As he begins his own garden, Pollan tries to emulate his father's less rigid ways but soon runs afoul of a woodchuck--which pushes him into the market ethic as he tries anything to rid himself of this garden-damaging pest. As he examines alternatives, Pollan begins to develop his own philosophy. He realizes that animals in general after the environment to their advantage, and he sees a parallel between a garden fence and a beaver's dam. His newfound notion views ""a garden [as] a place that admits nature and human habitation,"" one ""requiring human intervention or it will collapse."" He uses three examples--lawns, roses, and weeds--to support his argument, and by tracing their history and social and political aspects, makes a sound case for intervention in nature. In rejecting the wilderness ethic, he notes that it is now too late ""to follow Thoreau into the woods."" Instead, Pollan offers a 10-point formula for the gardener's ethic, which generally recognizes no division between nature and culture; in fact, he advocates that we participate in the transformation of nature by striking a balance between the market and the wilderness ethics: romantic notions about nature bear little fruit; continual taking can ruin a garden. More than a gardening book, this is a well-developed philosophy of life and nature in a technological world. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.