The Omnivore's Dilemmas By Michael Pollan

1015 Words3 Pages

Omnivore’s Dilemma “What should we have for dinner?” (Pollan 1). Michael Pollan, in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals shows how omnivores, humans, are faced with a wide variety of food choices, therefore resulting in a dilemma. Pollan shows how with new technology and food advancement the choice has become harder because all these foods are available at all times of the year. Pollan portrays to his audience this problem by following food from the food chain, to industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves; from the source to a final meal and, lastly he critiques the American way of eating. Non-fiction books should meet certain criterions in order to be successful. In his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan is able to craft an ineffective piece of non-argumentative non-fiction due to a lack of a clear purpose stated at the outset of the book, as well as an inability to engage the reader in the book due to the over-excessive use of technical jargon as well as bombarding the reader with facts. Since Michael Pollan received his Master’s Degree in English (“Michael Pollan: Biography”), he has written top shelf extraordinary books, some of which are New York Times Best Sellers: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A History of Four Meals, and many others (“About Michael Pollan”). Michael’s writing has won awards such as the World Conservation Union Global Award and the Genesis Award from the American Humane Association for his writing on animal agriculture (“About Michael Pollan”); therefor is credible enough to be writing about food and animals because he has been awarded in this subject. Moreover, Pollan is named one of Time’... ... middle of paper ... ...his builds a relationship between the two causing the predator to consume its meat without looking away (Pollan 307). This causes that person to no want to know what they are eating because people are used to not knowing what they are eating. If a non-fiction book was only filled with facts readers would quickly lose interest and not want to read it. Also, without personal opinions and anecdotes, the book would lack a purpose. Style is crucial to having a book that appeals to the reader’s attention span, and if there is no connection to the reader through the author’s personality, then this book is not successful due to the lack of a personal voice from the author. I have not here been trying to tell one how to write a non-fiction book but how one should look at one while reading it. Through the little details or the hard facts one should always look closer.

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