The pursuit of the American dream works something like an earthquake: it shakes everything up, creating new landscapes and tragedies. What better place to examine its effects than in our economically divided, ethnically diverse state? Though at times the transitions between topics are a bit fuzzy, this four-part series is engrossing and often moving, especially the episode on Indian gaming (April 13), which includes a segment on a casino conflict in Rohnert Park. "We’ve gone from stupid, drunk Indians
to rich, greedy Indians all within two decades," says a Cabazon Native American. The final episode explores genetic engineering and the tensions between agribusiness, with its reliance on fossil fuels, and small-scale producers like David Mas Masumoto, whose business was saved in part by restaurants such as Chez Panisse buying his glorious Sun Crest peaches at a time when he was getting just 50 cents a box. As always, Alice Waters speaks about seasonality, buying locally, and teaching kids to eat right; she’s been so thoroughly covered you can probably guess what she’ll say. But on the whole, the episode will engage people who care about what they put in their mouths. B+
Peggy Nauts

Georgia O’Keeffe’s vivid, visceral images were born of the artist’s drive to express what she famously called "the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it." In her first picture book,
San Francisco writer Rachel Rodríguez pairs her spare, elliptical prose with award-winning illustrator Julie Paschkis’s vibrant cut-paper collages to show children ages 4 to 8 what it might
be like to see the world as O’Keeffe did. While sometimes straining to compress the artist’s long life into picture-book format, Rodríguez succeeds in evoking O’Keeffe’s deep connection with the oversize canvas of the natural world, inviting young readers to "see the colors" and "hear the shapes singing." B+
Dashka Slater

One of the best aspects of the digital revolution has been the onset of MP3 weblogs, sites offering free downloads of "borrowed" songs. With these blogs becoming legitimate—record labels send promos their way, magazines like Rolling Stone champion them—it was only a matter of time before someone went totally legal and produced a for-sale CD. That would be San Francisco’s Oliver Wang, a former KALX DJ, Bay Guardian scribe, and creator of www.soul-sides.com, an MP3 blog devoted mostly to old-school, long-unavailable soul, funk, and hip-hop. For this compilation, Wang chose tracks he’d featured on the blog and much else from among his 7,000 LPs. Bursting with groovy, gritty soul from the ’60s and ’70s (and one similar track from 2005, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings’ "All Over Again"), the collection stands tall alongside similar excavations by master DJs like Gilles Peterson and Keb Darge. A few recognizable names and well-known recordings are here, but most songs will sound brand new. Anyone into the sweet melodies and sultry vocals of Al Green, Stevie Wonder, or Ann Peebles will swoon at these unearthed nuggets. With any luck, Soul Sides will be the first of many music blogs to go public, thus offering the ordinary listener the pleasure of feeling like a record-collecting fiend. A-
Dan Strachota
 

As readers of his books (The Botany of Desire most recently) and New York Times Magazine pieces know, Michael Pollan’s strength lies in transforming near-incomprehensible information into engaging narratives. This time, Pollan, now
a professor at UC Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism, traces the origins of three meals: one from
industrial products, one from organic foods, and one the result of hunting and gathering. In the first section, he explains how a simple grain like corn has become an overproduced, government-subsidized commodity, the reason you’re seeing high-fructose corn syrup on so many ingredient labels. The second part is a meticulous and revelatory look at the difference between organic and sustainably produced food. The story detours into holier-than-thou territory in the third part, though, where we find Pollan hunting wild pig, foraging morels, and culling cherries from a neighbor’s tree in a noble attempt to reduce eating to its primal essence, with one person responsible for producing or gathering everything he eats. It’s informative but also alienating; you feel like shoving a Big Mac down your maw just to spite him. Then you think back on the parallels he’s drawn and the insights he’s provided, and you want to buy him a drink. B+
Scott Hocker