Discussing Marginalia In David Koeppel's Banana

1) While reading Banana I am also trying to learn the best way to do marginalia since this is my first time ever doing it. One section that I marked is where Koeppel states, “God discovers the transgression…you know the rest” (4). I marked this with a question mark and wrote in the margin what is the rest because I am not very familiar with the bible and don’t know what the rest of the story is. Another marking that I do is write a few words in the margin to summarize paragraphs. An example would be where I wrote genetics of bananas next to the three paragraphs where Koeppel talks about the different gene combinations that bananas have depending on the type of banana (23). When Koeppel states, “The World Health Organization estimates that about 150 million children worldwide have vitamin A deficiencies” I underlined the sentence and put an exclamation point to show that the information shocked me (39). I also circle the names of people or companies and make a note in the margin like when Koeppel introduced Andrew Preston and how he advanced in his job at Boston grocery from janitor to a field representative (55).

2)
In Howards book Writing Matters she states, “Scientists focus on the characteristics, systems, and processes of the natural world, whether of people, plants, or planets” (455). So based on our book Writing Matters I would have to say that Koeppel is writing more along the lines of Sciences and Social Sciences. I say this because he is traveling the world to gather information on the history of bananas and he includes various research that people have done all around the world. One that Koeppel talks about is where researchers gathered phytoliths from Kuk Swamp and compared them to control samples from New Guinea confirming that Kuk Swamp was one of the first places where bananas where grown