Today is the birthday of author Michael Pollan. He’s the author of books on food and the food industry, notably The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), which The New York Times named one of the 10 best books of the year. His most recent book is This is Your Mind on Plants (2021), his second foray into plant-based psychedelics.
Pollan first became interested in the subject of food through his interest in gardening. He said: “Because I was interested in nature and wilderness and Thoreau and Emerson. I brought all their intellectual baggage to my garden here in New England and found that it didn’t work out very well, because ultimately Thoreau and Emerson’s love for nature was confined to the wild….”
