Speed Reads: From 'A World Appears' to 'Cooked'

Acclaimed author Michael Pollan has come out with a new work. Here is your guide to his best, where food, humans and culture are never quite what they seem. 

A World Appears (2026, Penguin)

Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness from several radically different perspectives: scientific, philosophical, spiritual, historical and psychedelic, to see what each has to teach us about this fundamental fact of our lives. He ventures beyond the brain labs, attempting to find neural explanations for our felt reality.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2011, Bloomsbury)

What shall we have for dinner? Such a simple question has grown to have a very complicated answer. We can eat almost anything nature has to offer, but deciding what we should eat stirs anxiety. As the culture of fast food and unlimited choice invades the world, Pollan follows his next meal from land to table, tracing the origin of everything consumed and the implications for ourselves and our planet.

Cooked (2014, Penguin)

This one takes us back to basics and first principles: cooking with fire, with water, with air and with earth. Meeting cooks from all over the world, who share their wisdom and stories, Pollan shows how cooking is at the heart of our culture and that when it gets down to it, it also fundamentally shapes our lives.

Speed Reads is a column for the bookworm who is short on time and reads on the go.