Articles Published in The Financial Times (UK)
The Intoxicating Garden
Every garden tells a story, a tale about nature written by our species and starring an obliging cast of plants. In our time, most of these stories are idylls of one kind or another, with the plants chosen for their beauty or fragrance or outward form, but always for their willingness to gratify human desire
This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan — drugs of choice
His descriptions of London’s coffee house culture and Honoré de Balzac’s barbarous habit of ingesting dry coffee grounds to fuel all-night scribbling sessions are worth the book’s price alone.
Michael Pollan on psychedelia: ‘Everything I once was had been liquefied’
The writer Michael Pollan is best known for his advice, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” His bestselling books (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Cooked) have served up large helpings of food for thought — about the health claims of packaged meals, the iniquities of industrial farming, and the joy a home-cooked family dinner can bring. In his seventh decade, however, Pollan has become fascinated by a new subject — psychedelic drugs.
Lunch with the FT: Michael Pollan
“So, did you eat the in-flight meal, then?” I cheekily ask Michael Pollan, mainly because he looks fresher and rosier and happier than any 55-year-old has a right to after 13 hours on a non-stop flight from San Francisco. The writer is in England to talk about his new book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.
Green Giant
With his lucid style and innovative research, Pollan deserves his reputation as one of the most respectable voices in the modern debate about food.