Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I loved "The Botany of Desire," and I'm sympathetic to the basic ideas in this book. But then I got to the sixth page of the first chapter (p. 20). Pollan makes a key statement: "Carbon is the most common element in our bodies--indeed in all living things." Hmmm, that sounds wrong. Yup, I double checked: oxygen is 85% [correction: 65%], carbon is 18%, hydrogen is 10% etc. [EDIT: this was corrected in a later edition of the book.] OK. Now I think I'd better read more carefully. I get to page 46: "...there's a lot less energy in a bushel of corn (measured in calories) than there is in the half gallon or so of oil required to produce it." Hmmm, I've heard arguments like that before, but a bushel sure is big and a half gallon is pretty small. There could be a half gallon of corn oil alone in that bushel. So I looked up the numbers. I double checked. I found figures of 80000 to 139000 calories for the bushel of corn, and 15000 to 20000 calories for the half gallon of oil. Not even close. These are not unimportant parts of the arguments in the book. These are the kinds of "facts" that get repeated over and over by people that believe what they read. I find it impossible to take the rest of the book seriously.