In Part IV of Michael Pollan's Cooked, aesthetically but perhaps inappropriately titled "Earth," Pollan delivers an absolutely delightful mix of food, microbiology, and one accomplished nun.

With a title like "Earth," one would expect Part IV to be about potatoes or some other other tuber, but although Pollan does mention a few roots in his pickling chapters, the methods of food preparation discussed in "Earth" require being underground at all. Rather, Part IV discusses the many and varied miracles of fermentation: pickled veggies, cheese, and alcoholic beverages. This section of Cooked isn't about the earth, it's about the wonderful world of microorganisms--that's what I got out of it, anyway.

There are microorganisms everywhere: in our intestines, between our toes, in our yogurt, and they even help out in our bread, as Pollan discussed in Part III. In my day-to-day life, I usually only hear and think about the bad bits of microbiology. After all, an E. coli outbreak is a serious and newsworthy thing. It was refreshing to hear about bacteria and fungi in a not-so-harmful context.