A Place of My Own

by Michael Pollan

At a turning point in his life, writer Michael Pollan found himself dreaming of a small wood-frame hut in the woods near his house - a place to work, but also a "shelter for daydreams." Ordinarily more at home among words than things, the author was seized by the idea of building the place himself, with his own two unhandy hands. A Place of My Own recounts his two-and-a-half-year journey of discovery in an absorbing narrative that deftly weaves the day-to-day work of design and building - from siting to blueprint, from the pouring of foundations to finish carpentry - with reflections on everything from the power of place to shape our lives to the question of what constitutes "real work" in a technological society. With one eye on Thoreau and the other on Mr. Blandings, Pollan uses the biography of a single tiny building to brilliantly illuminate the history, and meaning, of all human building: how nature is both sacrificed and celebrated when we transform a tree into a house; where the