Summary of Michael Pollan's Second Nature

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 A garden is a place where you can be alone and feel safe. It is where you can first grow something, and it is where you can experience the rush of discovery.
#2 My father was a Bronx boy who had been swept to the suburbs in the postwar migration. He was not much of a gardener, and the yard behind our house was a mess. My mother's father, who lived nearby, was constantly annoyed by the condition of our yard.
#3 Grandpa loved land, and he loved to spend his time and money on it. He would send his Italian laborers to replace our soil with his own, and he would constantly check on the condition of our house.
#4 Grandpa, who started out in the teens wholesaling produce in Suffolk County, managed to make money straight through the Depression. He then bought farmland at Depression prices and built a middle-class utopia in the suburbs.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)
• Nature
• Sciences et techniques
• Essays

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 25 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822548961
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Michael Pollan's Second Nature
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

A garden is a place where you can be alone and feel safe. It is where you can first grow something, and it is where you can experience the rush of discovery.

#2

My father was a Bronx boy who had been swept to the suburbs in the postwar migration. He was not much of a gardener, and the yard behind our house was a mess. My mother's father, who lived nearby, was constantly annoyed by the condition of our yard.

#3

Grandpa loved land, and he loved to spend his time and money on it. He would send his Italian laborers to replace our soil with his own, and he would constantly check on the condition of our house.

#4

Grandpa, who started out in the teens wholesaling produce in Suffolk County, managed to make money straight through the Depression. He then bought farmland at Depression prices and built a middle-class utopia in the suburbs.

#5

My grandparents had a beautiful, wide lawn that we would spend hours playing on when we visited them. The grass always had a fresh crew cut, and it was so springy and uniform that you wanted to run your hand across it and bring your face close.

#6

The area between the lawn and the beach was thickly planted and formed a sort of wilderness that we could explore out of sight of the adults on the patio. Here, we found mature rhododendrons and fruit trees, as well as a famous peach tree that Grandpa had planted from seed.

#7

Grandpa had a huge vegetable garden, and he was always picking the best vegetables for his meals. He loved to slice his beefsteaks into thick pink slabs and eat them with a knife and fork.

#8

Grandpa had a place in his mind where he kept track of the current retail prices of every vegetable in the supermarket. He grew far more produce than he and his wife could ever hope to consume, and he sold the excess to feed the hungry.

#9

The pleasure I got from harvesting vegetables was unrelated to eating them. I loved the fact that this was precious stuff and that I was able to see it growing on trees. The garden made an enchanted landscape that spoke to me in a child’s language.

#10

The front lawn is the most characteristic institution of the American suburb, and my father's lack of respect for it probably expressed his general ambivalence about the suburban way of life. In the suburbs, the front lawn is a part of a collective landscape, but it also says turpitude rather than meadow.

#11

The democratic system can handle the nonvoter far more easily than it can the nonmower. A single unmowed lawn ruins the entire effect, signaling that all is not well in utopia.

#12

The Gates development had a street name for each tree and flower, and named them after places in Alaska. The incongruity of remote, frontierish place names attached to prissy boulevards and drives never bothered anybody.

#13

The Gates was a different world. It was a suburb inhabited by the sons and daughters of the lower middle class, who were on their way to becoming quite affluent. The streets were broad and curved in unpredictable ways, which gave the impression of ruralness and age.

#14

My parents hired a landscaper to design and maintain our yard. He came up with a low-maintenance design that included only a slender, curving ribbon of lawn. The front yard had far more ground cover than grass.

#15

The suburban landscape is tailor-made for children. It is a place to play, and nothing surpasses a lawn. But a garden is more specific and is productive: it does something. I wanted something more like my grandfather’s garden, where I could put my hands on the land and make it do things.

#16

I had a friend named Jimmy Brancato, who lived down the street with his problematic parents. I liked Jimmy because he was bold and fearless, and he liked me because I had a brain. We made a good team.

#17

I had a farm that I and my brother would spend time on, which was a terraced garden. We would plant strawberries on one level, watermelons on another, and on a third some cucumbers, eggplants, and peppers.

#18

I had taught Jimmy about growing pumpkins, and one summer he decided to start a farm. He planted a small field of marijuana. He had considered all the angles and went to great lengths to avoid detection. But he was still caught.

#19