Named by Newsweek as one of the top 10 “New Thought Leaders” and to TIME magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2010, Michael Pollan has been writing and lecturing widely on food, agriculture, the environment and our health for the past 25 years.
He is the author of four New York Times best sellers: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (2010), In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008), The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001). The Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Pollan is also the recipient of numerous journalistic awards; he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in 2009 for best essay, and won the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003 and the Reuters-I.U.C.N. 2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism for his reporting on genetically modified crops.
His essays have appeared in many anthologies, including Best American Essays (1990 and 2003), Best American Science Writing (2004), the Norton Book of Nature Writing, and The New Kings of Non-Fiction, edited by Ira Glass. His articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine (where he served as executive editor from 1984 to 1994), National Geographic, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, Gourmet, House & Garden and Gardens Illustrated, among others. He has been a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987.
Pollan is the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism in the Graduate School of Journalism at The University of California, Berkeley.
