Athena bought this for me for my birthday, after I'd been raving about "The Omnivore's Dilemma" for weeks.

In some way, Pollan's new book picks up where "The Omnivore's Dillema" left off, though I would caution potential readers that this is a very different kind of book.

While "The Omnivore's Dilemma" contextualized well-written-research-cum-investigative-journalism in history and culture and paired it with commentary that carried an admitted slight bias, "In Defense of Food" really aims to answer the big question that the aforementioned commentary caused readers to pose to themselves and Pollan: "Okay, so what am I supposed to eat then?"

What I like about this book is that it answers the question generally. The from cover features the motto "Eat Food. Not much. Mostly plants." These six words, thankfully, do not become a mantra, but rather, a table of contents of sorts. Pollan is humorous, down-to-earth, and candid regarding his advice, which attempts to take regional differences, special diets, and modern roadblocks (lack of diversity in the supermarket, the financial constraints on a food budget that many people deal with) into account.

When grounded in the knowledge garnered from reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma," this advice makes a whole lot of sense. But I'll be most interested to hear Athena's review, since this is the first Pollan book she's reading, and I'm curious as to whether I accepted these loose guidelines for eating because I've become a Pollan disciple and just recently burned several food facts into my brain or because of the support he gives his claims within this volume.

Either way, I recommend it, but probably more as an appendix to "The Omnivore's Dilemma" than anything else.