First-year Book Choice

Every year, our school picks a book to mail out to all incoming freshman for them to read before orientation week. The first year I came, the book was Three Cups of Tea, which talked about an American that worked in the middle east to open schools in small, impoverished towns. The student body has just finished deciding what book will be going out to our incoming first years in 2010.
I absolutely adore Pollan's writing, and this book is particularly outstanding (I reviewed another one of his books back in November). In The O's Dilemma, he focuses on three different types of meals: the industrial meal, the local, farmed meal, and the hunted and gathered meal, focusing on the evolution of human eating patterns since thousands upon thousands of years ago. It's really interesting, and a wonderful insight into the industrial food chain.