Bernal Neighbor Jon Mooallem’s new book is called “Wild Ones,” and it takes a thoughtful (if bemused) look at mankind’s awkward relationship with the creatures of the Animal Kingdom.

Michael Pollan already praised Neighbor Jon’s book, and last Sunday, The New York Times Book Review did the same:

Mooallem, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, seamlessly blends reportage from the front lines of wildlife conservation with a lively cultural history of animals in America, telling stories of people past and present whose concern for animals makes them act in ways that are sometimes unexpected, sometimes heroic, and occasionally absurd. Thomas Jefferson obsesses over finding an American mammoth; a “sharp-witted hippie” ignites a worldwide movement to save the whales; a man lives in a cage and learns to dance with a whooping crane. There is very little self-righteousness or sentimentalism here, just an intense desire to understand why we do what we do when it comes to wild animals in America. Mooallem, who observes conservationists at work from California to Manitoba, narrates his experience while questioning his own assumptions along the way. […]

But this isn’t “Wild America.” There are no lingering close-ups or hushed moments of thrilling intimacy with wild animals. Which is part of the point. The art critic John Berger has argued that looking at animals gives us access to an unvarnished truth, whereas Mooallem suggests that looking at animals is hardly an act of pure observation. “From the very beginning, America’s wild animals have inhabited the terrain of our imagination just as much as they’ve inhabited the actual land.” He calls them “free-roaming Rorschachs” and points to the instability of the stories we weave around them to underscore their fiction. Pigeons were once considered lovely but are now seen as a filthy nuisance. Bears were once regarded as monsters, but when Theodore Roose­velt refused to shoot a wounded bear tied up for his sporting pleasure, the country seized on this moment of mercy and the beloved teddy bear was born. Children are surrounded by imaginary animals — butterflies on pajamas, animal-themed classrooms, books and movies full of fish and foxes that behave like people. As Mooallem digs through the layers of meaning that have “been draped over animals, and on top of each other like translucent silk scarves,” one starts to get the feeling that maybe we have never been able to really see wild animals at all.

PHOTO: Jon Mooallem via Jon Mooallem

Neighbor Nathanael Johnson lives on Godeus Street in the Dominion of Bernalwood, and last week he published a brand-new book that “may be the perfect Bernal book,” according to one local culture critic.

The book is called “All Natural: A Skeptic’s Quest to Discover If the Natural Approach to Diet, Childbirth, Healing, and the Environment Really Keeps Us Healthier and Happier,” and when you put it that way, the comments of our local culture critic rings true.

Here’s the summary:

In this age of climate change, killer germs, and obesity, it’s easy to feel as if we’ve fallen out of synch with the global ecosystem. This ecological anxiety has polarized a new generation of Americans: many are drawn to natural solutions and organic lifestyles, while others rally around high-tech development and industrial efficiencies. Johnson argues that both views, when taken to extremes, can be harmful, even deadly.

Johnson, raised in the crunchy-granola epicenter of Nevada City, California, lovingly and rigorously scrutinizes his family’s all-natural mindset, a quest that brings him into the worlds of an outlaw midwife, radical doctors, renegade farmers and one hermit forester. Along the way, he uncovers paradoxes at the heart of our ecological condition: Why, even as medicine improves, are we becoming less healthy? Why are more American women dying in childbirth? Why do we grow fatter the more we diet? Why have so many attempts to save the environment backfired?

In this sparklingly intelligent, wry, and scrupulously reported narrative, Johnson teases fact from faith and offers a rousing and original vision for a middle ground between natural and technological solutions that will assuage frustrated environmentalists, perplexed parents, and confused consumers alike.

So far, Neighbor Nathanael’s book rates five stars on Amazon. Off to a promising start.