The Soil Will Save Us

This will surely be called an important book. Ohlson conveys her information in the lively manner of writers such as Michel Pollan and Rowan Jacobsen, making complicated ideas easily accessible to the reader, so that we see the ground at our feet not as dead dirt but rather as, in her words, a coral reef teeming with life, a 'massive biological machine' on which the health of our species depends. We're lucky to have this account. --Michael Ruhlman, author of The Soul of a Chef On the long list of things we have to do to fight climate change, learning to pay attention to soil again is near the top. It's not just dirt, it's not just something that holds plants upright--as this book points out, it's pretty damned vital. --Bill McKibben, author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet I was barely a dozen pages into The Soil Will Save Us when I felt the ground shifting under my feet--the literal ground, as in the composition of the rich humus of old-growth forests compared to the exhausted, scorched, and ruined ancient fields of global farming--and the psychic ground.... This is a remarkable book, which tells--with a light touch and a breezy, readable manner--a story of modern science of the most crucial importance. --Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and There Is No Me Without You At last, soil has been included in the conversation about food. And you don't need a degree in soil sciences to see how the web of life below the surface that infuses soil-- is soil --is strongly affected by the various webs of life that occur aboveground, for better and worse. . . . This book is eminently readable, well-researched, and important. --Deborah Madison, author of The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone