By Michael Pollan
256 pages; Penguin

A mantra worth 1,000 words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." In Defense of Food (Penguin), by Michael Pollan, shows the overstuffed and culinarily confused how to "vote with their forks" against our national obsession with diet and health—you won't see a nutrient list on a peach. The gist of Pollan's new rules: Avoid fake (i.e., processed) food, ignore health hype (it's often dead wrong), graze widely, and don't eat anything your great-grandma wouldn't recognize. A welcome dispensation for omnivores.

— Cathleen Medwick