How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (Unabridged)

More by Michael Pollan

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  How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (Unabridged)

  Michael Pollan New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018
  
  A New York Times Notable Book 
  
  The #1 New York Times bestseller.
  
  A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences
  
  When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.
  
  A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

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  The Botany of Desire (Unabridged)

  Michael Pollan Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires, sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control, with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, the plants have also benefited at least as much from their association with us. So who is really domesticating whom?

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  Second Nature: A Gardener's Education (Unabridged)

  Michael Pollan In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man's place in the natural world. A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere.
  
  Chosen by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 75 greatest books ever written about gardening, Second Nature captures the rhythms of our everyday engagement with the outdoors in all its glory and exasperation. With chapters ranging from a reconsideration of the Great American Lawn, a dispatch from one man's war with a woodchuck, to an essay about the sexual politics of roses, Pollan has created a passionate and eloquent argument for reconceiving our relationship with nature.

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  A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams (Unabridged)

  Michael Pollan Michael Pollan’s unmatched ability to draw lines of connection between our everyday experiences - whether eating, gardening, or building - and the natural world has been the basis for the popular success of his many works of nonfiction, including the genre-defining best sellers The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and In Defense of Food. With this updated edition of his earlier book, A Place of My Own, listeners can revisit the inspired, intelligent, and often hilarious story of Pollan’s realization of a room of his own—a small, wooden hut, his “shelter for daydreams” — built with his admittedly unhandy hands. Inspired by both Thoreau and Mr. Blandings, A Place of My Own not only works to convey the history and meaning of all human building, it also marks the connections between our bodies, our minds, and the natural world.

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  The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Unabridged)

  Michael Pollan One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year
  
  Winner of the James Beard Award
  
  Author of #1 New York Times Bestsellers In Defense of Food and Food Rules
  
  What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.

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  In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Unabridged)

  Michael Pollan #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Food Rules 
  
  Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?
  
  Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion--most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American Paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we see to become. With In Defense of Food, Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.
  
  "Michael Pollan [is the] designated repository for the nation's food conscience."
  -Frank Bruni, The New York Times
  
  " A remarkable volume . . . engrossing . . . [Pollan] offers those prescriptions Americans so desperately crave."
  -The Washington Post
  
  "A tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be redced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential... [a] lively, invaluable book."
  --Janet Maslin, The New York Times
  
  "In Defense of Food is written with Pollan's customary bite, ringing clarity and brilliance at connecting the dots."
  -The Seattle Times
  
  Michael Pollan’s most recent book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation--the story of our most trusted food expert’s culinary education--was published by Penguin Press in April 2013, and in 2016 it serves as the inspiration for a four-part docuseries on Netflix by the same name.

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  The Writer in the Garden

  Jane Garmey (editor), M. F. K. Fisher, Jamaica Kincaid, Stephen Lacey, W. S. Merwin, Michael Pollan, Vita Sackville-West & Edith Wharton The Writer in the Garden adds up to a glorious compendium of writing that is amusing, original, and idiosyncratic. Excerpts span not only the beauties of the garden but such far-reaching topics as weeds, the tribulations of gardening in a cold climate, the dangers of rare plant collecting, the delights of weeding, the pitfalls of growing roses, and the place of "tacky" in a garden.
  
  With selections carefully chosen from both sides of the Atlantic, this anthology pays homage to the great garden writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries while, at the same time, introducing the listener to some of the most original voices of today's generation of garden writers.
  
  Books on gardening have become a marketing phenomenon. However, this is the first time an anthology of garden writing has appeared on audio. Impeccably read by a group of professional actors, this potpourri of philosophical meanderings, passionate observations, and practical advice is essential listening for all gardeners and garden lovers. The authors include Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West, Abby Adams, Edith Wharton, Stephen Lacey, E. B. White, Beverly Nichols, Ken Druse, Eleanor Perenyi, W. S. Merwin, Mirabel Osler, Henry Mitchell, Jamaica Kincaid, Robert Dash, Sara B. Stein, Michael Pollan, M.F.K. Fisher, Anne Raver, Patti Hagan, and Paula Deitz.

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  The Omnivore's Dilemma: Young Readers Edition (Unabridged)

  Michael Pollan The New York Times bestseller that’s changing America’s diet is now perfect for younger readers
  
  “What’s for dinner?” seemed like a simple question—until journalist and supermarket detective Michael Pollan delved behind the scenes. From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young readers’ adaptation of Pollan’s famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices.
  
  In a smart, compelling format with updated facts, plenty of photos, graphs, and visuals, as well as a new afterword, The Omnivore’s Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation that needs it most: It’s time to take charge of our national eating habits—and it starts with you.
  
  **Bonus PDF included with charts, diagrams, and photos.

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  Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (Unabridged)

  Michael Pollan **Now a docu-series airing on Netflix on February 19, 2016, starring Pollan as he explores how cooking transforms food and shapes our world. Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney exectuve produces the four-part series based on Pollan's book, and each episode will focus on a different natural element: fire, water, air, and earth. **
  
  “Important, possibly life-altering, reading for every living, breathing human being." --Boston Globe
  
  In Cooked, Michael Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements—fire, water, air, and earth—to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession of culinary masters, Pollan learns how to grill with fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment everything from cheese to beer.
  
  Each section of Cooked tracks Pollan’s effort to master a single classic recipe using one of the four elements. A North Carolina barbecue pit master tutors him in the primal magic of fire; a Chez Panisse–trained cook schools him in the art of braising; a celebrated baker teaches him how air transforms grain and water into a fragrant loaf of bread; and finally, several mad-genius “fermentos” (a tribe that includes brewers, cheese makers, and all kinds of picklers) reveal how fungi and bacteria can perform the most amazing alchemies of all. The reader learns alongside Pollan, but the lessons move beyond the practical to become an investigation of how cooking involves us in a web of social and ecological relationships. Cooking, above all, connects us.
  
  The effects of not cooking are similarly far reaching. Relying upon corporations to process our food means we consume large quantities of fat, sugar, and salt; disrupt an essential link to the natural world; and weaken our relationships with family and friends. In fact, Cooked argues, taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make the American food system healthier and more sustainable. Reclaiming cooking as an act of enjoyment and self-reliance, learning to perform the magic of these everyday transformations, opens the door to a more nourishing life.
  
  From the Hardcover edition.