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The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World Paperback – 28 May 2002
Michael Pollan (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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"A wry, informed pastoral." --The New Yorker
The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore's Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America
Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide. InThe Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires--sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control--with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House Trade
- Publication date28 May 2002
- Dimensions13.08 x 1.5 x 20.17 cm
- ISBN-100375760393
- ISBN-13978-0375760396
- Lexile measure1350L
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"[Pollan] has a wide-ranging intellect, an eager grasp of evolutionary biology and a subversive streak that helps him to root out some wonderfully counterintuitive points. His prose both shimmers and snaps, and he has a knack for finding perfect quotes in the oddest places. . . . Best of all, Pollan really loves plants." --The New York Times Book Review
"A wry, informed pastoral." --The New Yorker
"We can give no higher praise to the work of this superb science writer/ reporter than to say that his new book is as exciting as any you'll read." --Entertainment Weekly
"A whimsical, literary romp through man's perpetually frustrating and always unpredictable relationship with nature." --Los Angeles Times
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Product details
- Publisher : Random House Trade; 1st edition (28 May 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0375760393
- ISBN-13 : 978-0375760396
- Dimensions : 13.08 x 1.5 x 20.17 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 173,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 157 in Horticulture (Books)
- 590 in Plant Botany
- 617 in Ecology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Michael Pollan is the author of seven previous books, including Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. A longtime contributor to the New York Times Magazine, he also teaches writing at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, TIME magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.
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He has the most magical, open mind; the ability to take the everyday and look at it like a true artist - thus forcing the reader to look anew at his/her own everyday.
Here, he looks at four plant species whose development and spread has been closely linked with Homo sapiens - the apple, the tulip, the cannabis plant and the potato, and considers the evolutionary advantage from the plant perspective. The book uncovers history, folk-law, economics, politics and much more.
Pollan delivers much fascinating information and has the lightest and most passionately engaged of writing styles. He is a wonderful raconteur. I read this book with a wider and wider smile, thoroughly delighted and enchanted.
This book reminded me in many ways of Anatomy of a Rose: The Secret Life of Flowers by Sharman Apt Russell. Both authors have the ability to be fascinatingly informative whilst simultanously managing charm, entertainment, profound thought and beauty.
Both effortlessly illustrate Blake's:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And A heaven In a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity In the Palm of Your Hand
And eternity in an hour
They are writers who can take the mundane, and open it to deep meaning, philosophical complexity and education
A small factual teaser from the tulip section - the most prized and valuable tulips were those variegated by fine filagrees of crimson patterning upon the primary colour base. But this was caused by the presence of a virus, so over time, plants grown from bulblets broken off from the 'parent' bulb would grow weaker and weaker - so increasing the rarity and fabulous cost of the prized variety. The evolutionary gainer from mans' 'meddling', not the tulip, but the virus, which we disseminated!

Definitely recommend this to anyone.


