UC Davis knows good research and good writing.

Put the two together and you get The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, announced last March as the Campus Community Book Project for 2006-07, a month before the book was even published.

That fact alone made the selection a risky one. But project organizers had read Michael Pollan's manuscript, and they liked it — seeing it as a perfect fit with this year's campus initiative on healthy foods.

The selection was risky in another way as well: Never before in the book project's five-year history had the organizers selected a book that was not yet available in paperback. Hardcovers cost more, of course. To help offset the cost, the campus bookstore offered a 37 percent discount, selling the $26.95 book for $16.95.

As the book began circulating, the selection proved to be a winner with the faculty — nearly 30 instructors incorporated the book into their fall and winter courses, according to the University Writing Program's Gary Sue Goodman, who helped organize this year's book project events.

That level of representation in the university curriculum is far and away the best ever for the Campus Community Book project, Goodman said.

The nation's critics liked the book, too. The New York Times Book Review recently named The Omnivore's Dilemma as one of the five best nonfiction works of 2006. The New York Times Book Review described The Omnivore's Dilemma as "supple and probing," and stated that Pollan "makes us see, with remarkable clarity, exactly how what we eat affects both our bodies and the planet. Pollan is the perfect tour guide: His prose is incisive and alive, and pointed without being tendentious."

"It all worked out really well for (Pollan) and us," Goodman said.

— Dave Jones